


Bell, Book and Mountie

by lamardeuse



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-13
Updated: 2010-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:12:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/pseuds/lamardeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A due South AU based on the movie Bell, Book and Candle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bell, Book and Mountie

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story contains elements of dubious consent.

Cast   


Gillian Holroyd.........................Ray Kowalski

Shep Henderson.....................Benton Fraser

Nicky Holroyd...........................Ray Vecchio

Queenie Holroyd......................Frannie Vecchio

Merle/Sidney............................Stella Dubois

Pyewacket................................Eisenhower (Diefenbaker)

Mrs. DePass............................Harding Welsh  


   
   
   
   
 

INT. RAY'S SHOP, DAY

  
Ray Kowalski was not having a good day. The overseas shipment was late again; Mrs. Maplehurst was going to have his head if she didn’t get her Indian cobra in time for Christmas. To make matters worse, he was out of crickets and there wasn’t a single supplier in all of Chicago that had any. He knew because he’d called every one of them.

Eisenhower stared up at him dolefully, his piercing blue gaze flickering between the soft-shelled turtle tank—which contained four very hungry soft-shelled turtles—and Ray.

“Do not look at me like that,” Ray told the dog sourly. “It’s not my fault Frannie opened that box by accident and let them escape.” It had taken him three hours to round up half the crickets his harebrained sister had let loose, and the other half were still roaming free in his apartment and shop. He’d found three in his coffee pot this morning.

Ike brushed against his leg, and Ray reached down to stroke behind his ears. “Yeah, I know it,” he said, acknowledging the dog’s scolding. “I’m in a rut so deep I can’t see daylight. I need to do something different. Try something new.”

Ike whuffed softly, head jerking toward the door. Ray spun on his heel, expecting a customer, but it was only—

—well, maybe 'only' wasn’t the best word. Benton Fraser, Ray’s new upstairs neighbor, did not appear to have one quality for which _only_ was a suitable description. Besides being tall, dark and extremely fucking gorgeous, he seemed like a genuinely _nice _guy.  Ray had never been much for the polished, wide-lapel type, but Fraser was polite in a way that most well-heeled squares were not, and there was something in his eyes that told Ray the suit did not tell the whole story of the man inside it.

 

  
Fraser looked up then and caught Ray gazing at him through the glass. Before Ray could react, the other man produced a guileless smile and waved at him. Ray raised a hand in reply, and after a moment Fraser turned away and headed up the wide wooden stairs.

Ray looked down at the dog and grinned ferally. “Hey, Ike, you want to get me a Christmas present?”

The dog whuffed again, and Ray frowned.

“Too big to wrap?” Ray stared at his familiar for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Jeez, I sure hope so.” **  
**

   
   
   
   
 

INT. FRASER'S APARTMENT, DAY

  
"Oh, dear!"

Considering he'd come upstairs to find his front door unlocked and slightly ajar, it wasn't a shock to find someone inside his apartment. Instead of the traditional masked intruder, however, fate had chosen to present him with a petite, dark-haired woman with huge brown eyes and a hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression.

"Is this _your_ apartment?" the woman demanded, her earlier shocked outcry yielding to naked curiosity. Fraser blinked at the abrupt change; even after nearly a year in Chicago, he was still often surprised by the bluntness of Americans. They seemed to think nothing of walking up to any chunk of territory and planting their flag.

The irony of that crept up behind him and smote him on the back of the skull. It made him surly.

"Yes, it is," Fraser responded, much more tartly than he would have a year ago. "Would you mind telling me what you're doing in it?"

The young woman pursed her lips and flung an arm at the window behind her. "I came in because your window was open and the wind was blowing in," she said with a touch of haughtiness. She also drew herself up to her full height, but Fraser noted this didn't have much of an effect. "I don't imagine you wanted a gizzard all over your fancy books."

Fraser frowned, then decided that pursuing it would be futile. There would likewise be no point in mentioning that his door had most likely been _closed_ and _locked_ before she'd decided to rescue his collection of Twain first editions. "Yes, well, you're right about that," he admitted, gentling his voice. "I wouldn't have liked to have them ruined."

She eyed him warily for another moment, then broke into a guileless smile that somehow unnerved him. "I'm glad you're not angry with me, Mr. Fraser."

Fraser cocked his head. "How did you know my name?"

"Oh, I've known about you since you moved in," she said cheerily. "I live upstairs." She jerked a thumb skyward.

"Directly above me?" he asked. She nodded, and Fraser decided to exhibit a little of that American curiosity. "Tell me, are you studying modern dance?"

"No," she answered, her expression turning wary once more.

Fraser pressed on. "It's only that - every night I hear rhythmic footsteps and chanting - "

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" she interrupted, body suddenly tense.

Fraser shook his head, and the woman practically sagged in relief. "Good." She turned her mercurial attention to his desk. Trailing one finger over his blotter, she crooned dreamily, "You have beautiful handwriting."

Fraser pinched the bridge of his nose; much more of this and he'd have an incapacitating headache. "I, uh - "

"I took a few minutes to clean up your letters and papers," she continued. "You're kind of a messy guy for someone with such an expensive suit. It's Brooks Brothers, isn't it?"

Fraser shut his eyes against the sudden spike of pain. "Well. Once again, I thank you kindly for rescuing my - ah - books."

She blinked at him prettily.

"But I had planned to do some telephoning."

Blink. Blink.

"Some _private_ telephoning?"

The young woman's warm gaze swiftly turned icy again. "No problem. I'll just remove myself from your adobe, shall I?" As she stalked past him, she raised her chin and declared, "Before you moved in a guy who worked for Reader's Digest lived here, and he was really nice." A dramatic pause. "_Really_ nice."

When the door slammed shut behind her, Fraser released a huge sigh and collapsed into his leather wing chair. Pulling at the knot in his tie, he loosened it sufficiently to allow the throbbing in his head to subside.

Closing his eyes again, he tried to summon a few pleasing images to restore his equilibrium.

The Northern Lights blazing across a cloudless, star-laden sky.

A pristine, snow-capped mountain.

Stella with her arms crossed, asking him if he was actually going to wear last year's tuxedo to the wedding.

Fraser sighed again, allowed his brain to edit the image slightly.

Stella smiling at him in unabashed joy. Better. Not as likely, but better.

His fiancée had insisted that he take her out for Christmas Eve, which he supposed was appropriate considering the circumstances. He told himself to buck up, to pull himself together, that he was only tired; after all, he'd moved two weeks ago, he was starting a new job in the new year, and tomorrow he -

A picture of his downstairs neighbor appeared suddenly behind his eyelids, exploding like a supernova. Ray Kowalski - they hadn't been formally introduced but he'd noticed the man's name written in tasteful gilt lettering on the shop window - was a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a disturbingly magnetic package. From his fanciful collection of exotic reptiles to his close-fitting black turtlenecks and wild blond hair, it was clear he was a nonconformist like many of the artistic 'beatnik' types Fraser had encountered during his early days at the CBC. But there was a jittery, crackling energy to him that defied an easy label. Something told Fraser that any relationship with Kowalski would be like kayaking the rapids on the MacKenzie - an adventure fraught with hidden dangers and unparalleled excitement.

Fraser's eyes snapped open. Dear lord, he was losing his mind. With a pained grunt, he pushed himself to his feet and strode over to his desk, then seized the receiver and raised it to his ear.

The telephone emitted a blood-curdling scream. He promptly dropped it. From its prone position on his desk, the receiver continued its high-pitched tirade:

_"COSI FAN TUTTI! POLLO GRANDE DELL'ARTE! SEMPER UBI SUB UBI! BLEEEAAAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!"_

Fraser picked up the receiver between two fingers and slammed it back on its cradle, ending the connection to whatever ring of Hell he'd accessed.

"Oh, dear," he murmured. Something told him this was going to be a very long night.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

INT. RAY’S SHOP, EVENING

  
Since it was Christmas Eve, Ray closed the shop early in hopes of enjoying a little—well, maybe _heavenly_ peace was pushing it, but plain old peace would be fine, too. Ike was currently in the bedroom, stalking the last of the escaped crickets. Ray supposed he should make more of an attempt to rescue the remaining bugs, but he was too tired to care. He’d go to Mr. Li’s in the morning and buy a pound of crickets from him. The zoo would just have to make do with dried bugs until he could find more of the live ones. In the meantime, he was in the mood for roaches, not crickets. He rolled a joint—a small one, because a big one would knock him out ‘til New Year’s—put some Charlie Parker on the hi-fi, and lay back with his bare feet propped on the coffee table.

He was just lighting up when the doorbell rang.

“Shit,” he murmured, stubbing the glowing end into his ashtray. That had to be a whole fifty cents wasted right there.

When he parted the curtain that separated his apartment from the shop, he was surprised to see Fraser standing on the other side of his glass door, looking like a million bucks. Well, the million bucks part wasn’t a surprise, but the Fraser part was, and—man, he was out of it, because he hadn’t even inhaled and he felt stoned.

Fraser was wearing a charcoal-grey full length wool coat that made his blue eyes stand out even more, and he was looking so sheepish that Ray wanted to strip the coat off him and dance him around the room in time with the stuttering rhythm of Bird’s sax. Fraser’s gaze lighted on Ray’s face, then sank to his chest, then slid to his feet. Ray wiggled his toes, and two spots of color appeared on Fraser’s cheeks.

_Fucking adorable,_ Ray thought. _Too bad you don’t fuck adorable._

“I, uh,” Fraser began, his hand reaching up to rub at his eyebrow, and how fucking adorable was _that,_ “I was wondering if I might borrow your telephone.” He blinked for a moment, as though rewinding what he’d said, then added, “I know we’ve never been introduced—my name is Benton Fraser.”

Ray took the large hand being offered, feeling the dry, warm strength of it. “Ray Kowalski.”

“I live on top of you—I mean, ah, above you—”

Ray grinned toothily. “Mm-hmm. I know.”

Fraser stared at him.

"What?"

Fraser shook his head like Ike after a swim in Lake Michigan. "I - I just assumed that Chicagoans never concerned themselves much with their neighbors."

"Nah, we're as nosy as anybody else," Ray told him. Fraser cast a glance skyward, and Ray frowned, trying for a concerned expression. No doubt the guy already thought he was some kind of pervert, might as well _try_ to act normal. "So what's wrong with your phone?"

"I'm not sure. It seems to be intent on cursing me in very bad Italian."

This time Ray was the one to cast his gaze heavenward. Frannie. He'd bet his whole stash on it. "Well, you're welcome to use mine," he said, stepping aside to allow Fraser entry into the shop and heading toward his apartment. "Come on."

Fraser hesitated for a moment, then moved to follow him. Ray felt the other man's gaze burning into his back and fought back another grin. Straight or no, the guy was interested. Ray usually didn't bother with trade, but there was nothing rough about Benton Fraser. It might be worthwhile -

Ray's paranoia immediately reasserted itself and mentally slapped him. No. No way. It never paid to mess with mundanes.

As soon as they entered Ray's living room, Ike pushed past Ray and planted his paws right on Fraser's chest, shedding fur all over his expensive wool coat. Ray closed his eyes.

"Hello," Fraser said, with more enthusiasm than expected. Ray opened his eyes in time to see Ike deliver a sloppy lick to Fraser's chin.

_No fair,_ Ray thought sourly. Ike swiveled his head to treat Ray to a smug doggie grin.

"Ike, quit it," Ray growled, grabbing the dog by one shoulder and heaving him off Fraser. "I'm sorry, he's not usually such an asshole."

"It's all right," Fraser said mildly, smiling down at Ike, and whoa, was _that_ a smile, "I don't see many huskies."

"Yeah, well, he tells me he's half wolf, but I don't believe it. He's way too crazy about donuts to be a wild animal." Ike whuffed.

"Reminds me of home," Fraser said, his expression turning wistful. It made him look about ten, and something deep inside Ray went _ping_.

He cleared his throat. "You from Alaska?"

"Canada."

"Hm, yeah," Ray said, stroking his chin. "Makes sense." Fraser raised startled eyebrows at him, and Ray gestured at him. "Your accent." Also the strange aura of - well, almost a natural purity about him, as though Fraser walked through life with an armor of innocence plastered to his matinee idol exterior. It made Ray wonder what he'd uncover if he ever found a way past the armor and the killer good looks.

_Down, boy,_ Ray told himself sternly. Ike emitted something that sounded like a chuckle.

"Well, uh," Ray said, gesturing toward the telephone table, "knock yourself out." Fraser nodded and moved to the telephone, and Ray settled back onto the couch, his gaze straying to the stubbed out joint. Hopefully Fraser wasn't a narc in his spare time, or Ray was busted.

He listened absently to Fraser talking on the phone to the telephone company about sending out a repair crew. He opened his mouth to tell him it wasn't going to do any good, then closed it again with an accompanying shrug. Turning more of his attention to Fraser, he noticed the guy had a nice way with people, personable without being overly familiar or insincere. Ray found himself caught up in the rhythm of his rounded tones, so different from his own harsh, flat voice. Hell, he was positively hypnotic -

"Mr. Kowalski? Ray? Ray?"

"Wh-hunh?" Ray jerked awake, hands swatting at invisible crickets. Fraser's handsome, open face was close to his, the expression one of concern. Jesus, he was pathetic, falling asleep at seven o'clock on Christmas Eve. He swiped at the corner of his mouth. Well, at least he hadn't drooled on himself.

"Thank you so much for the use of the telephone," Fraser said, still bent at the waist and staring into Ray's eyes.

"No problem," Ray said as breezily as he could. It came out sounding choked.

"I, uh - "

"You want a drink?" _Oh, smooth one, Kowalski._

Fraser hesitated, then slowly straightened. "I'd - ah - I'd like to. But I have a dinner engagement - " he checked his watch " - for which I'm currently late." He sighed, and Ray took another moment to marvel. That proved he was Canadian; nobody in the States outside of Harvard knew how to use prepositions like that.

"Tell you what," Ray said, pushing himself to his feet. "I'll give you a rain check."

Fraser's voice was soft with a sharp, almost hidden edge of rough. "I'd like that."

The two of them stood together for - Ray had no idea how long. Could've been a minute, could've been a day, but it was way too short, and it really sucked that it ended with a sharp staccato rap on his shop door, because Fraser jumped about a foot, and looked guilty afterward, which just made Ray sad. Because that confirmed he'd been thinking about Ray the way Ray figured he was, and it further confirmed that he most certainly did not Swing That Way.

Well. The only solution to being jilted on Christmas Eve before you'd even had a chance to make a move was to get shitfaced. And if Ray was not mistaken, the woman standing beyond that door intended to help him achieve that noble goal.

"Ray, you're not dressed," Frannie huffed as the door opened.

Ray looked down at himself. "What am I, naked or something?" Beside him, he could practically feel Fraser's surface temperature rise.

"Oh! It's you!" Frannie's full attention - surprise, surprise - was now riveted on Fraser.

"Benton Fraser, my sister, Frannie Vecchio," Ray muttered.

"Mr. Fraser and I have met," Frannie said archly. "I'm afraid he thinks I need a good spanking."

Fraser coughed. "Not at all, Miss Vecchio," he said politely.

"Oh, good," Frannie said, smiling. Whipping her head back to Ray, she whined, "But all our friends will be at the Scrabby End tonight." She turned back to Fraser. "Mr. Fraser, convince him."

Fraser looked dubious. "The Scrabby End? I don't think I've ever heard of it."

"I don't guess you would've," Ray answered. "It's kind of a dump."

"But it's _fun_," crowed Frannie.

Fraser arched a brow. "Well, is it fun?"

Ray arched one back. "It can be."

Fraser's other eyebrow joined the first. "Well, ah - that's - quite all right, then." He placed his hat back on his head. "Merry Christmas to both of you."

"Happy Solstice," Frannie said absently. Fraser shot her a curious look, then nodded at Ray and let himself out.

Frannie watched him go. "I think you like him," she declared after a moment.

"I think you are unhinged," Ray shot back. Turning on his heel, he headed back toward his apartment. "And I am not getting dressed up to go to the Scrabby End, so just forget it."

Frannie folded her arms. "Put on your socks, Spartacus," she grumbled at his retreating back.

   
   
   
   
 

 

INT. RESTAURANT, EVENING

  
"As soon as I got a look at it I saw red. I turned right around and walked into Barry's office and told him Huntley and Brinkley do not rate a closet for a dressing room, and neither do we."

Fraser poked a listless fork into his Waldorf salad. Normally he found Stella's ambition, evidence of what he had come to recognize as the American spirit, refreshing and invigorating. But tonight, it sounded a shrill, dissonant note in the already jangling orchestra of his thoughts.

“So he says to me, _honey_—God, I hate it when he calls me that—_honey_, thing is, you’re not Huntley and Brinkley. And I told him, ‘Not _yet_ we’re not.’”

He looked up after Stella fell silent; she was glaring at him across the table, her features pinched and narrow. It was then that he realized he’d spoken her last sentence along with her. _Well, what did she expect?_ he thought rebelliously. She’d certainly said it often enough in his presence for him to commit it to involuntary memory.

“I was agreeing with you,” he said, raising his eyebrows in a gesture of innocence.

Her eyes narrowed further; after nearly a year, she could see right through his disguises. Ray Kowalski, it seemed, could see right through him too—and they’d only known one another for a handful of minutes.

The second thought should have frightened him as much as the first should have reassured him. But neither one had the desired effect.

“Well,” she said frostily, “I was only trying to do the best I could for us.”

“I understand that,” he told her, fighting to keep his own voice warm, “but it’s—it’s only that it’s Christmas Eve. Even Chicago’s premier journalist deserves a holiday.” He reached out a hand across the table and covered hers. Her hands were the most beautiful things about her—graceful and expressive, a dancer’s hands. They told him stories he didn’t think Stella meant to reveal.

A shy smile, one he’d forgotten she possessed, appeared on her face. “Chicago’s premier journalist?”

“That would be you,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

The vulnerable expression faded from her face, to be replaced by something a great deal more durable. She raised her glass of Mumm’s and waited for him to do the same before she spoke. “Today, Chicago…”

“Tomorrow, the world,” he finished for her, in what he hoped was an equally determined tone.

Fraser wondered if every successive version of the person you loved strayed a little further from the original, like a mimeograph of a mimeograph of a mimeograph.

Or perhaps, he mused, savoring the cold, sharp tickle of the bubbles as he swallowed, perhaps he was the one who was straying.

   
   
   
   
 

INT. SCRABBY END, EVENING

  
“Ray, you’ve been like a wet sheet all evening,” Frannie complained.

“Blanket,” Ray corrected automatically, his elbows resting on the small round table, his gaze fixed on his scotch.

“You always get this way when you drink whiskey,” she continued.

“Wrong: when I get this way I always drink whiskey.”

Frannie sighed and took a resigned sip of her Singapore Sling. “I don’t know why I hang out with you,” she said morosely. “Ray is a lot more fun.”

Ray raised his eyes to the stage, where Frannie’s real brother, Ray Vecchio, was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his latest band, his long fingers deftly negotiating a pair of bongos. He was wearing the new beret he’d won off Lucky Pierre in a recent poker game and a pair of narrow-lensed sunglasses he’d probably picked up at the five and dime.

He looked like a complete and utter dick.

“You just like me better because I have more than three functioning brain cells,” Ray shot back, downing the rest of his drink. Sure, Vecchio and him had grown up together, but like most brothers, real or not, they had a hard time seeing eye to eye on major issues. Such as, Ray thought Vecchio was a complete and utter dick, and Vecchio thought Ray was one. It was a relationship fraught with fascinating contrasts like these.

It didn’t help that Ray was about a thousand times better at spell casting and potion brewing than Vecchio was. Vecchio was a fairly laid-back guy, but there was an inner core of competitiveness that made him insufferable sometimes. For instance, there had been the time when Vecchio had come back from a book signing downtown, and had boasted for a week that he’d talked to Alan Ginsberg. So Ray had whipped up a little summoning potion, and the next time Vecchio came for a visit he found Alan Ginsberg lounging naked in Ray’s living room.

There were some perks to this witchcraft gig, he supposed. But right now, with the memory of Benton Fraser’s smile fresh and raw in his mind, Ray was hard-pressed to think of them.

“Don’t you ever wish you could be normal?” he asked suddenly.

“Normal?” Frannie parroted. “God, no. Normal people are boring. Humdrum.”

Ray nodded at the passing waiter in a silent request for another drink. “I think maybe I wanna be humdrum for a while.”

Frannie’s lips curved knowingly. “I bet you’d like to be humdrum with that Mr. Fraser.”

Ray chewed on his lower lip. “Maybe,” he conceded.

“Ha! I knew it!” she crowed happily. Leaning forward, an evil glint in her eye, she asked, “D’you think you could get him away from his fiancée?”

Ray’s gut plummeted for his shoes. “What fiancée?”

“Her name is Stella. I saw a picture of her in his desk when I was snoopying around.”

Stella, Stella…the name rang a bell, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. “Hm.”

“What ‘hm’?” Ray jumped at the sound of the voice coming from right behind him. He hadn’t even noticed that Vecchio’s set had ended.

“Ray’s got a new boyfriend,” Frannie gushed to her brother as he slid his long frame into a chair.

“For Chrissakes, Frannie,” both men growled in unison.

“Well, you could have, if you did a little—” She wiggled her fingers.

“He’s straight,” Ray bit out. There was no point in listening to the little voice in his head that was telling him _then again, maybe not_. Whether or not Fraser was one-hundred-percent-all—uh, Canadian heterosexual, there was no question that he’d chosen his team. And Ray had absolutely no patience for men who lived one way and played another.

“That wouldn’t make any difference to you,” Frannie continued blithely. “You could turn Rock Hudson gay if you wanted to.”

Vecchio made a grunting noise. “She’s right about that,” he conceded.

Ray turned to him in surprise. “Was that a compliment?”

Vecchio shrugged. “Hey, it’s Christmas. Consider it your present, ‘cause I sure as hell didn’t buy you anything.”

Ray shook his head. “I don’t want to become one of those sad warlocks who uses their talents to get laid.” He considered for a moment. “Well, okay, maybe now and then.”

Vecchio snorted.

Ray shook his head. “But not for him. I don’t want him that way.”

Frannie gaped. “You haven’t fallen in love and lost your powers?”

Vecchio stared at her. “Are you unhinged?”

“Of course not,” Ray sighed. The waiter chose that moment to deliver his third round, and he savored the burn of the whiskey before adding, “That’s an old wives’ tale. It’s the opposite. We can’t fall in love.”

Silence descended on the table for a few moments.

“Well,” Vecchio said, lifting his drink in a toast. “Merry fucking Christmas.”

Frannie covered her disappointment well. “You’re no fun,” she pouted, folding her arms and looking away from him.

“Yeah, I know, I suck,” Ray answered, feeling oddly hollow. He raised the whiskey glass to his lips again, and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

“Speak of the Angel,” Frannie said archly.

Ray placed his glass on the table carefully and turned to face the direction of her gaze.

There, just inside the door, stood Benton Fraser and the woman who had to be his fiancée. As they advanced through the smoky interior, recognition sparked inside him.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered under his breath. “_That_ Stella.”  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

  
INT. SCRABBY END, EVENING

"You're not telling me _he_ lives in your new building?" Stella's face was even more pinched than usual, as though she'd smelled a rotting caribou. Luckily, they were still out of earshot of Ray and his companions, although the other man was staring straight at them, so he couldn't have missed Stella's expression.

"You know - ah - Mr. Kowalski?" Fraser wasn't expecting this; he'd assumed that Stella and Ray did not inhabit the same social circles. One look at the smoke-shrouded interior of the Scrabby End confirmed that assumption. Stella wouldn't be caught dead in a night club like this one. The walls were a mixture of exposed brick and primitive murals that reminded him of Eastern Woodlands Indian cave paintings. The patrons were an even more intriguing mixture, a cornucopia of ages and races. Not one of them seemed inclined to wear a suit and tie - well, with the exception of a few of the women.

"Are you listening to me?"

"I'm sorry," Fraser said automatically. "You were saying?"

"I was saying that he's a creep," Stella said primly.

"Well, now," Fraser demurred, "I don't know that that's - _how_ is it that you know him?"

"He went to my junior high one year," she said, shuddering. "Until he got kicked out."

Fraser blinked. "He got - "

Stella shook her head firmly. "I don't want to talk about it. He's a creep, Ben. He's also queer as a three dollar bill."

Fraser felt his cheeks flush. "Well. He's been nothing but courteous to me."

Stella actually leered at him. "Yes, I can imagine he went out of his way to be _courteous_ to you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fraser demanded.

Stella waved a hand. "Nothing, nothing," she muttered. "Can we run screaming now, please?"

"I can't do that. They've seen us. It wouldn't be - "

Stella heaved a put-upon sigh. "Oh, God, you're never going to learn to be American, are you? All right, but _quickly_." And taking him by the arm, she began to half-guide, half-drag him toward Ray's table. Fraser stumbled slightly before falling into step so that he wouldn't appear to be his fiancée's backward child.

"Is this the son I raised to survive alone in the trackless wilderness with only his wits to guide him?"

_Oh, dear Lord, not now_, thought Fraser. "You did no such thing," he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "We moved to Toronto when I was ten, for Heaven's sake." He risked a glance at the apparition beside him and swiftly wished he hadn't.

Robert Fraser, once Canada's premier radio journalist, had been haunting his son for a little over a year now, since he'd been killed in the pursuit of a story uncovering the attempts of the Chicago mob to infiltrate Toronto's criminal scene. The younger Fraser's pursuit of justice for his father's murder had led him to Stella and an unexpected career turn south of the border. None of that truly needed exploring at this juncture, however, because at the moment Fraser was primarily concerned that his normally three-piece-suited father was dressed in a black velvet smoking jacket garnished with a red silk neck scarf. The ridiculous ensemble was topped by a cranberry beret. He was also smoking a cigarette in a long white holder.

"What in God's name are you wearing?" Fraser whispered.

"I'm trying to blend in, son," Fraser, Senior whispered back. "If you'd actually stuck with investigative reporting, you'd know more about it. It's called being undercover."

"No one can _see_ you," Fraser retorted. "What's the point - "

"Hey, man." Fraser's head jerked up in time to see a young man with shoulder-length black hair look right at his father and nod approvingly. "Nice threads."

Fraser stared at the young man, then at his father. Fraser, Senior beamed. "Thank you, lad. You've excellent taste."

"Go. Away," Fraser gritted between his teeth.

His father and the young man gave matching Fraser haughty glares. "You're starting to sound just like them, son," Robert opined frostily. "Don't forget where you came from."

Fraser turned to deliver a scathing retort, but the old man had disappeared. With a final withering look, the dark-haired youth also faded into the smoke.

Fraser sighed heavily, then realized he had stopped walking and Stella was staring at him.

He looked around him, only to discover he was standing in front of Ray Kowalski's table. The three people seated there were regarding him with varying levels of interest and healthy doses of amusement thrown in.

"Why Benton Fraser, you just get more fascinating all the time," Miss Vecchio said breathily, fluttering her hand before her face like a fan.

Ray leaned back in his chair as his gaze swept slowly from Stella to Fraser to the place where his father had just been standing. When those cool azure eyes returned to Fraser, Ben felt the weight of that gaze as surely as a caress.

"Compliments of the season," Ray drawled. "Care for an egg nog?"  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

INT. SCRABBY END, EVENING

  
Ray hadn't seen Stella Dubois since she was fourteen, but she still had that lemon-sucking expression down cold, the one that told whoever she was looking at that they weren't good enough to eat the gum off the bottom of her shoe. Considering how much she'd looked at Ray that way in eighth grade, it was downright nostalgic to see it again. Ray was about to tear up with the golden memories, here.

"How can you not have heard of our program?" Stella sniffed. “It’s number two in the ratings after Milton Berle.” There was a miniscule twitch in the corner of her eye as she glared at Ray; that was something new. But then, those gray-flannel status seeker types were nervous all the time. That's why the Milk of Magnesia guys were raking in the dough.

Ray shrugged. "Don't own an idiot box." He took another sip of his drink and tried to appear bored. The truth was that once he'd figured out who Fraser was, he'd taken a look at the show on his buddy Sandor's TV one night. He'd heard they were going to be doing a great documentary on Adlai Stevenson, and of course he just had to check that out.

Even in black and white, with tiny pulsing lines crisscrossing his face (Sandor's TV really blew), Fraser'd been gorgeous. Ray hadn't even noticed that Stella was on the show.

"I watch it every night," Frannie chimed in. "I think it's the duty of every American citizen to stay informed on world events."

Vecchio rolled his eyes. “My sister, Eleanor Roosevelt,” he muttered. Rising to his feet, he said, “Well, it’s been scintillating, folks, but I’m up in five minutes.” A nod to the table at large and he headed backstage.

Ray watched as Stella shot daggers at the side of Fraser’s head with her eyes, little stabbing stares that had to mean _you promised we’d only have to spend a few minutes with these weirdos._ But even though he’d looked pretty whipped when he first came through the door, Fraser was doing a bang-up job of ignoring her. When you added that to the old dead guy who’d been standing beside him earlier, Fraser was starting to reveal hidden depths.

Then Fraser looked at him, and shit, he’d been right, because the blue in Fraser’s eyes was dark like deep water. Dangerous ideas began gathering together in Ray’s brain.

_No,_ he told himself firmly. _Do not go there._

“So, you and Fraser, huh?" Ray said aloud, tearing his gaze away from Fraser's to try to regain his balance. "Guess it really is a small world."

"Positively claustrophobic," Stella said, taking another drag of her cigarette.

"I gotta hand it to you, though," Ray continued, unperturbed. "You always had good taste in guys."

"More than I can say for you," Stella muttered under her breath. Beside her, Fraser twitched like he'd just licked an electrical socket.

"Oh, I dunno," Ray drawled, treating the man across from him to a frank appraisal that made Fraser's ears turn pink. "I think maybe my taste is turning over a new leaf."

"I understand you and Stella went to school together?" Fraser bleated. Stella’s little daggers turned into machetes, but Fraser just went right on staring at Ray.

Ray bared his teeth. “Yeah, one year.” He paused. “Well, most of a year. I got expelled in April.”

Fraser’s eyes widened and he got all Canadian again. “Oh, I’m sorry to—”

Ray waved a hand. “Forget about it. I changed schools a lot in those days. Best thing that could’ve happened to me. I got to meet all kinds of people, from the South Side to the Golden Mile." He shot a special smile at Stella, who got even more pinched-looking.

"That was a really good year for him, though," Frannie said cheerfully. "Somebody wrote a poison pen letter to the principal about him. Said he'd been 'engaging in subversive activities that compromised the security of the school, the city of Chicago and possibly the nation.'" She beamed with pride in her brother's achievements, totally unaware that the author of the letter was sitting across the table from her. As for Ray, he had to admit that old Stella had a way with words. He wondered if she still wrote her own material.

"Dear Lord," Fraser said. "That's - ah, rather spectacular for an adolescent."

"I was an early bloomer," Ray said affably.

"Ray's a changeling," Frannie explained, still smiling like a loon. "That's why he's so talented."

"Ah," Fraser said, nodding. A little line formed between his brows.

"You don't gotta worry, Fraser," Ray said smoothly. "I don't go in for subversion much anymore. Too many people doin' it nowadays." He grinned, and the blush spread from Fraser's ears to his cheeks. Ray got a sudden image of Fraser's naked body spread out beneath him, its whole surface raw and angry with arousal.

Fraser's head jerked like a frightened horse, as if he'd seen the picture inside Ray's head, felt his desire. Ray frowned. He hadn't managed to project that strongly in a while. Better tone it down before the guy got embarrassed -

Then a slow, dreamy smile spread across Fraser's face, and Ray thought, _Oh, shit_.

"So how did you two end up together?" Frannie asked, oblivious to the little drama playing out beside her.

Fraser blinked stupidly, then darted a glance at Stella before answering. "I came to Chicago on the trail of my - ah, of my father's killers, and Stella was investigating related Mob activity at the time. She agreed to help me in my efforts."

"Must've made for quite a story," Ray said casually.

"I'll have to tell you about it sometime," Fraser said warmly, his eyes caressing Ray like a lover's hands. This time, Ray was the one who jerked. Man, he had to turn this off, it wasn't fair to the guy to do this to him.

"Well," Stella said frostily, "as much as I've _enjoyed_ being here - "

Ray shot Stella a pointed look out of the corner of his eye, and her hands flew to her throat. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound emerged. _Sorry, sweetheart. Trying to concentrate here._

Up on the stage, Vecchio and his band started up with a slow, romantic version of _What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?_ Ray exchanged glances with Vecchio, who grinned and nodded at him. Sometimes, Ray had to admit, his brother wasn't a total asshole. But his timing in this particular instance really sucked.

Ray returned his attention to Fraser. Leaning forward, he murmured, "Go ahead and tell me now."

Ray blinked. Wait a minute. That hadn't been what he'd meant to say.

Fraser stared back at him, eyes glazed. "I'd like nothing better."

Across the table, Stella was making desperate little gurgling noises that were nearly drowned out by the music. She clutched at Fraser's arm with one clawlike hand, and Fraser started out of his reverie.

"Stella, are you all right? Are you choking?" Stella gurgled and clawed at him some more. "Have you lost your voice?"

Stella nodded frantically and jabbed an accusing finger in Ray's direction. Fraser frowned at her, then at Ray, then back at her. Ray noted he bore more than a passing resemblance to Ike when he was outwitted by one of the turtles.

"Well, perhaps we'd better get you home," he said, rising to his feet. He held out Stella's fur coat so that she could put her arms into it. "Thank you for the - ah - hospitality." That little crease appeared between Fraser's brows again; Ray wanted to lick it until it smoothed out under the pressure of his tongue.

Shit. Which one of them was enchanted here?

"'Bye," Frannie said, "talk to you soon." She glanced at Stella guiltily. "Or...not."

Ray watched as Fraser guided a still-flailing Stella out of the club. When they were out of earshot, Frannie snickered.

"What?" Ray snapped.

"You gonna give her her voice back in time for her to make her next broadcast?" Frannie asked archly.

Ray leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and let the sound of Vecchio's soft jazz wash over him. "I'll think about it," he murmured, his mind trying to process what had just happened. He hadn't lost control that badly in - well, since he was a kid. And that year in Evanston had been the worst; he'd felt out of place from the first day, and Stella had made sure that feeling had never gone away.

_Now's your chance to pay her back_, a voice inside him whispered. _It would be so easy for you._

As Ray downed the last of his scotch, the waiter materialized beside him and deposited a fresh one on the table. He picked it up and started on it immediately. Maybe if he kept drinking, he'd drown out the demon inside him and the never-was memory of Fraser's bare skin.

Hell, maybe he'd bat a thousand and sleep through Christmas altogether.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, NIGHT

 

Fraser wasn’t entirely sure why he was here.  He only knew that he could be nowhere else.

Ray answered the door of his apartment in bare feet and a dark blue robe that seemed custom-fit, conforming to every line of his body in a way that was singularly distracting.  While he wasn’t certain how much time had passed in contemplation of these sights, the sound of Ray discreetly clearing his throat informed him it had been much too long. When with a mighty effort Fraser willed his gaze upwards, he noticed that Ray was wearing black-rimmed spectacles.  He also looked a little bleary-eyed.

Fraser glanced at his watch.  Dear Lord.  It was past two a.m.

“I—I’m sorry,” he stammered.  “I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“‘Salright,” Ray said muzzily.  “I was—uh, reading.”  He reached up and pulled the glasses from his face with a sheepish expression.  The small concession to vanity stirred something unfamiliar in Fraser’s chest.  He was unused to displays of vulnerability.

“May I come in?”  he blurted, shocked at the question as soon as it left his mouth.  Really, it was as though he had no control over—

“I don’t—” Ray began, then halted.  His gaze slid away, and he shrugged.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Maybe you’d better.”

Not sure what that meant and not particularly caring, Fraser stepped inside the shop when Ray stepped back.  As soon as he did, a powerful feeling of rightness welled up in him.  _Yes_, he thought.  _This is where I need to be._

He shook his head as if the strange thought could be so simply dislodged.  It remained firm, only growing in strength as Ray led him to his apartment.

“You want that rain check now?” Ray asked, jerking a thumb at the bar.

“Please,” Fraser said.  “A whiskey, if you have it.”

“Islay or lowland?”

Fraser’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.  “Islay.”

Ray favored him with one of those lightning-quick grins and opened a cabinet door, revealing several glass bottles of varying sizes.  “Thought so,” he murmured.  He poured Fraser a generous shot and gave it to him neat.  Fraser took it with a polite thank-you, stiffening his fingers so that Ray would not see they were shaking.

Ray stared at him for a long moment, then took a couple of steps backward, putting some distance between them.  “Look, ah, Fraser, there’s something you gotta know.”

“You hated Stella in school,” Fraser said automatically.  He knew this was not what Ray had been about to say, but somehow he was certain that he did not want to hear what Ray was about to say.

Ray frowned.  “I didn’t hate her.  I learned from her.  I never hate people who teach me things, even if they don’t know they’re doing it.”  He took a deep breath.  “Uh, this is gonna sound pretty screwy to you, but I—”

“Stella and I are getting married tomorrow,” Fraser said, staring at the glass of amber liquid in his hands.  “Well.  Later today.  We decided to drive to wherever it is you can do it, and just—do it.”

When this was greeted with nothing but silence, Fraser raised his head.  Ray was standing near the fireplace, his expression inscrutable.  Finally, he nodded.  “Yeah, that’s—uh—that’s good,” he murmured, his voice low and uneven.  “That’s the way it should be, huh?”

“Is it?”  Fraser set the glass on the table and rose on unsteady legs to his feet.  His heart was pounding to such an extent that it was making him nauseous.  He took one tentative step toward Ray, then another.

Ray shook his head, once.  “Don’t.  This isn’t anything you want to do.”  The words were slow and measured, and Fraser felt a tug backward, as though he were being manipulated by an unseen puppet master.

“I can’t seem to—stop myself,” Fraser admitted, and as soon as the sentence was spoken he felt almost giddy with relief.  There was no need for masks in front of this man, no need for Fraser to hide.  It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, like stepping out into thin air.

But would Ray let him fall, let him crash to earth?

Fraser blinked.  Ray was very close now, and his breath was warm and whiskey-scented and not at all unpleasant. 

“Fraser—this isn’t where you should be,” Ray said, his voice edged with desperation.  “Listen to me.  You need to go home.”

Fraser watched as one of his own fingers traced over Ray’s slightly damp lower lip, watched as Ray’s eyes closed to slits like a cat’s. 

“This is home,” Fraser murmured, right before his mouth took the place of his hand.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, NIGHT

 

  
So much for his magical powers.

One of the most fundamental exercises in magic was being able to cover your tracks.  Enough witches and warlocks had met a sticky end—usually on the end of a stick—because they didn’t have the sense or the talent to clean up after themselves.  And one of the quickest ways to do that was to simply undo what you’d done.  As for Ray, he’d been able to reverse his spells since he could fucking walk.

If that was true, then why couldn’t he manage to undo a basic infatuation hex, one he hadn’t even been concentrating on enough to realize he was doing?  It wasn’t like there was even a potion involved, although most love potions sold nowadays were nothing but sugar and eucalyptus oil, expensive cough syrup that did absolutely zip to get you laid.  Well, maybe you ended up with fresher breath, and that helped your chances—

Fraser chose that moment to lick Ray’s neck, and all of Ray’s already disjointed thoughts scattered and flew south for the winter.  God, it had been _way _too long since anyone had done that to him—or that—or _that_—

“Ohhh, Jesus, Fraser, please, you gotta quit that—”

Fraser’s head jerked up, concerned blue eyes meeting his own.  “You don’t like it?”

“Liking is not the problem here.  The problem—ohhh, _shit_—” Ray trailed off into incoherence again, because as soon as he’d received that judgment Fraser went right back to his former activity with renewed enthusiasm.  Ray registered the scrape of Fraser’s teeth and groaned, his cock hardening under his robe.  It occurred to him that if Fraser got any more enthusiastic one of them was probably going to have a stroke.

Then the room seemed to be moving forward—oh, no, that wasn’t it, he was moving _backward_ and Fraser was gently pushing him toward the back hallway with the determined pressure of his body.  As they shuffled in an awkward dance, Ray nearly stumbled and Fraser caught him around the waist and pulled him close to steady him.

Ray sucked in a breath, because even under all that wool he could tell Fraser was as aroused as he was, and suddenly he wanted to strip every layer off this man until there was nothing but skin under his fingers.

The small but strong voice of his conscience was still telling him _no_, but the rest of him was sinking fast before the onslaught of Fraser’s quiet, desperate passion.  Fraser was kissing him again now, kissing him like Ray was the answer to some kind of question he’d held inside himself for a long, long time, and, well hell, Ray had never been kissed like that before, and what, he was supposed to be a good boy and try to figure out a way to make it _stop_?  Right now he couldn’t have cared if the whole fucking _world _ended around him, just so long as he could keep Fraser’s mouth on his, Fraser’s hands in his hair.

And that was something he’d never liked much, because usually when guys put hands in your hair it was a way of controlling you, to keep you pinned or to make you go deeper when you were blowing them.  But for Fraser it seemed to be just another place to touch him, a place that felt really good to both of them, because Fraser’s fingers were gliding over his scalp, leaving crisscrossing trails that seemed to buzz with electricity, and as they moved Fraser _hmmed _into his mouth like that electricity was leaking out everywhere.  

It was in this charged atmosphere that Ray found himself being gently but firmly shoved onto his bed, Fraser following him down, his lips never leaving Ray’s.  Ray panicked then, summoned the last shred of his good intentions and broke away from Fraser, both of them panting as though they’d run six blocks instead of waltzed twenty feet to his bedroom.  

“Fraser, you got to remember who you are,” Ray managed, gasping like a landed trout.  “This isn’t you.”

Fraser blinked at that, and then his brows drew down, but not in the befuddled way of someone under the influence of a spell.  No, this expression was angry, furious even, and until this moment Ray wasn’t sure Fraser had that in him, and boy, was this a bad time to be getting even more turned on.

“Who am I, then?” Fraser demanded through clenched teeth.  “You tell me.”

Ray knew this was one of those reciprocal questions, but for some reason he found his mouth flapping to answer it.  “You’re a nice guy who wears expensive yet tasteful suits and lives in a fancy yet tasteful apartment and has a nice, successful career.”

Fraser actually flinched at that.  “Is that all I am?”

Since Ray wasn’t about to add _you can __also __conjure your dead dad and you’re sexy as hell and you kiss like the Devil himself,_ he gentled his voice and answered, “No, that’s not all there is to you.”  He took a breath.  “I’m sure that Stella sees—”

Fraser met Ray’s gaze.  “Nice guy, expensive suit, tasteful apartment, successful career,” he said bitterly.  “That pretty much sums it up.”

This time it was Ray’s turn to flinch.  So that answered the question of whether or not Stella had changed.  Still, she’d have to be dumb as dirt not to see the good in this guy.  “Fraser, you can’t mean—”

“I thought you—” Fraser blurted, his expression briefly raw and open, then closing up shop so quickly Ray wasn’t sure he’d seen what he’d seen.  Fraser shook his head once, almost violently, then shoved himself off the bed.  “Never mind.”

“Wait a minute!”  Ray was on his feet before he knew what he was doing, and his hand had closed around Fraser’s wrist without any help from him.  There was a heavy, charged silence as both of them stared at the place where Ray’s fingers dug into Fraser’s pale, pale skin.

They looked up at the same time.

“No more talking,” Fraser said.  “Please.”

Ray could only nod, his breath stopping in his throat and making a harsh, rasping sound when it finally broke free.  Fraser’s big hand gripped the belt of his robe and tugged, and the next thing Ray knew he was lying prone on the bed, as bare as the day he was born.  Although judging by the glint in Fraser’s eye, this time would probably prove to be a lot more fun.

The voice in his head fell silent as he reached up and dragged an unresisting Fraser down to his level.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

  
INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, MORNING

  
Ray was jolted into consciousness by the cold, wet press of Ike’s nose on his cheek, followed swiftly by an annoyed huff of fetid doggie breath.

“Jeez,” Ray groaned.  “Give a guy a break, will you?”

Ike responded with a growly whine.  Ray flopped over onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

“You’re right,” he said hollowly.  “I don’t deserve one.”

  


   
   
   
   
 

INT. STELLA’S APARTMENT, MORNING

  
“You’re…jilting me?”

“I, ah,” Fraser stammered, looking down at his hands.  This was proving to be more difficult than he’d thought.  Then he summoned the memory of Ray staring up at him with huge, avid eyes as Fraser touched him, and everything seemed to settle into place.

“Yes,” Fraser said.  “Yes, I am.”

“And what, exactly, am I supposed to do now?” Stella asked coldly.

“Well, you could always go back to Art Taylor, the fellow _you _jilted,” Fraser offered helpfully.  He blinked as the cattiness of the words sank in.  Dear Lord, what devil was possessing him?  “I, ah—I’m sorry, that—”

Stella held up a hand and Fraser clapped his mouth shut.  “You’re clearly insane,” she said lowly.  “Though I did have my suspicions before this.”

Fraser rubbed at an eyebrow.  “As for the show—I’ll go to Murray tomorrow morning and explain to him that I’m resigning—”

“You’re _what_?” Stella snarled, rounding on him.

Fraser actually took a step back.  “Well, I thought it would be the least I could do.  For you.”

“You’ll do no such thing.”  Stella walked over to the side table and took a cigarette from the enameled box that held them so stylishly.  “Our professional relationship is still quite successful—for both of us.  You can do whatever you like to me personally, but I’m not about to let you damage my _career_, darling.”

“But—” Fraser trailed off when he realized he had no rejoinder to this extraordinary statement.  Stella had always had an unfathomable ability to blindside him.

“And speaking of appearances,” Stella said, stepping up to him and blowing smoke, “I don’t have to remind you that it would be quite damaging to _your _career if certain—tendencies—ever came to light.”

Fraser schooled his features to calm, knowing it was useless but unable to break the habit of decades.  “Understood,” he told her stiffly. 

“Good,” she murmured, almost soothingly.  Patting his arm, Stella added, “Don’t worry, Ben.  Your secret is safe with me.  As long as you keep it quiet, you can have your fun.”

Something burst inside him then, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “It’s not—it’s more than that.  I wouldn’t have done this to you for—fun.”

For a split second, Fraser thought he saw Stella’s features reveal one of her long-buried secrets.  The implacable mask had reasserted itself by the time she spoke.

“That may be true,” she told him.  “But that’s the only reason he did it.”

  


   
   
   
   
 

INT. RAY’S SHOP, EVENING

  
“There you go, guys,” Ray told the box turtles as they munched happily on their respective crickets.  “Lots to go around.”

“Jesus, that’s disgusting.”  Ray turned at the sound of his brother’s voice.  Vecchio stood near the door in his faded leather bomber jacket, lip curled.

“Said by a man who worked in a store that sold dried frogs and bat’s eyes in brine,” Ray drawled. 

“Yeah, well, it’s easier when they’re dead,” Vecchio shot back. 

“So what brings you here?” Ray couldn’t help asking, when the silence stretched between them.

Vecchio shrugged.  “Just haven’t seen a lot of you lately, brother mine.  Frannie says you closed the shop yesterday.”

“I always close the shop on Mondays.”

“Yesterday was Thursday.”

Ray turned his attention to the python.  “Oh.  Right.”

“So, you been spending a lot of time with this guy, huh?”

Ray couldn’t help himself when his inner asshole rose to the bait.  “Yeah, I been spending a lot of time with Fraser.  Every now and then we even get out of the bedroom—”

Vecchio held up both his hands.  “Yeah, okay, okay, I get it, and we don’t need to go into details.  I just—we’re worried about you, is all.  You know it doesn’t pay to mess with mundanes.”

“Yeah,” Ray agreed, setting down the box of crickets and rubbing at the back of his neck.  “I know that.  But he’s not—it’s not like that.”

“Then how is it?  How come you don’t bring him round the End?”

This time it was Ray’s turn to shrug.  “I mentioned it, but he never wants to go anywhere.” 

“And why you think that is, huh?” Vecchio asked casually.

Ray grinned evilly.  “Because I’m the best cocksucker in Chicago?”

Vecchio surprised him by not reacting.  “Yeah.  Well, you just keep telling yourself that.  Meantime, I’m trying out a new set at the End tonight.  It’d be nice if you could come.”

Ray’s grin faded; he felt gut-punched.  “Yeah.  I’ll, ah, try to make it.”

Vecchio nodded and let himself out, and Ray followed him and locked the door behind him.  A few moments—or maybe a few hours—later, Ray registered Fraser’s voice calling his name softly.  He sighed and headed toward his apartment.

Fraser was standing in his hallway, a clean white towel that looked like a snowdrift wrapped around his lean hips.  “Was that your brother?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, trying to ignore the way the water still clung to Fraser’s chest and failing.  “He, uh, asked us to stop by the End later.  You want to go?”

Fraser’s eyes skittered away from him and something in Ray’s gut turned cold.  “I’d like to, but I forgot to tell you that I had some work to do at the studio.  Research for—ah, an interview.”

“Right,” Ray drawled.  “Research.”  Fraser’s head snapped up, blue gaze meeting Ray’s without flinching, but he said nothing.

“So,” Ray murmured, moving slowly toward Fraser, his eyes never straying, “it’s probably a good idea for us to take a night off, right?”  He watched Fraser’s Adam’s apple bob as he stepped close enough to feel Fraser’s breath on his face.  “Otherwise you might get bored with me.”

Fraser swallowed again and shook his head.  “I won’t get bored with you.”

“No?” Ray cocked his head.  “How do you know?”

Fraser’s answer was to touch his lips to Ray’s softly.  Ray slid one hand up Fraser’s neck and buried it in Fraser’s wet hair, while the other went unerringly to the knot in his towel. 

Fraser offered a surprised grunt as the towel dropped to the floor, then a groan as Ray sank to his knees in front of him.

“Believe me,” Fraser choked, as Ray’s tongue darted out for its first taste, “boredom is not going to be a problem.”  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

  
INT. SCRABBY END, NIGHT

  
Vecchio wasn’t that surprised when his brother didn’t show up.  But the person who _did _show up surprised the hell out of him.  As soon as the first set was over, he set down his drums on the stage and ambled over to her table.

Stella Dubois still looked way too high-class for the Scrabby End, but he noticed her hair was loose this time, falling in soft blond curls around her shoulders.  She was dressed in hip-hugging black Capri pants and a matching sweater that was probably illegal in several Southern states.

“Aren’t you a little out of your depth?” he asked, smiling thinly.

She raised her head and eyed him like one of Kowalski’s bugs.  “What?  Don’t I blend in?”  She straightened her sweater, drawing it even tighter over her generous breasts.  “I went to the sleaziest shop I could find.  It’s right around the corner from this place.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ray agreed.  “I know.  It’s where I buy a lot of my clothes.”

She looked him up and down.  “Oh.  I’m _terribly _sorry.” 

“Sorry I have such rotten taste?  Or sorry you insulted it?”

“Why don’t you decide,” Stella told him, with a wave of her hand.  “You appear clever enough.”

Oh, this was starting to get _fun_.  Ignoring her disdainful stare, he pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down, then waved to Igor, who came over and took his drink order.  He ordered another Tom Collins for her as well, for which she did not thank him.

“So why’re you here, Miss Dubois?  Slumming isn’t your style, and you’re getting a little long in the tooth to be sowing your wild oats—”  this time she shot him a glare that was positively venomous “—so why don’t you share your game with me, huh?  I _like _games.”

“I’m not playing any games,” Stella told him, reaching into her purse for a cigarette, “merely learning more about how the other half lives.  Maybe I’ll do a feature on it someday.”  She lifted her hand, tracing an imaginary headline:  “‘Chicago’s Demi-Monde: Safe Haven for Communists Threatening America’s Heartland.’”

Ray burst out laughing, startling her.  “Oh, come on.  That’s been tried before.  We beat that rap _years _ago.”

Stella’s lips thinned.  “I’m sure I can come up with a fresh angle.”

“Keep working on it,” Ray told her.  “You appear clever enough.”  She glowered at him, and he leaned toward her across the table.  “But I got your angle right here, sweetheart.  The only reason you’re here is to try to figure out what he has that you don’t.”

Stella stared at him for a moment, her expression frozen, and then to his shock and confusion her lower lip actually _wobbled _before the mask reasserted itself.  He was still reeling from that when she rose from her chair and nodded curtly at him.  “Well,” she managed, her voice just a little too loud, “it’s been such fun—”

Ray was on his feet in an instant, and before he knew what the hell he was doing he had her surprisingly fragile wrist enclosed in his grasp.  “No.  Wait.”

She regarded him coolly, but it was too late, because he’d _seen _her. 

“Look, I’m sorry, all right?  I’m a moron, everybody says so.  Come on, stick around for a while.  I’ve got another set coming up—we’re doing some post-Bop stuff that’ll knock you sideways.  You like jazz?”

She looked down at her wrist; he let it go swiftly.  Well, he’d tried.

_Tried to what?_ his inner choir boy demanded.  _Piss her off and make her feel like a castoff?_  The truth was, he knew all too well what it was like to stand in Ray Kowalski’s shadow, if for a different reason than Stella Dubois’.  He’d gotten over seriously resenting the guy in high school, but as much as he hated to admit it, he could sympathize with her a little, prickly ice queen exterior and all.

“I like dancing,” Stella murmured.

He looked over at her, startled; her gaze was still riveted to the place where his fingers had been, where the thumb of her other hand was now rubbing gently at her wrist.

“So do I,” Ray told her softly, taking a tentative step toward her.  “Our stuff’s not much good for dancing, but I’ll tell you what.  You stick around for the second set, me'n the boys'll swing it a little.”

Stella lifted her chin.  Her gaze was challenging and direct and Ray fought to keep his thoughts pure.  If there was one thing he loved, it was a girl with _chutzpah_.  Hey, he might be a warlock, but he was an Italian warlock. 

“And what happens if I stick around for the third set?” she asked him.

He took another step, close enough to feel her breath on his face.  It smelled like those imported anise candies from that little sweet shop in Cicero. 

Oh, man, he was _doomed._

“Then I’ll take you dancing myself,” Ray promised, matching her challenge and raising her a hundred.

   
   
   
   
 

 

 

EXT. MR. LI’S HERB SHOP, DAY

  
“What the _hell _do you think you’re doing?”

Vecchio didn’t even turn around to look at him, just kept fiddling with the lock.  “Opening up the shop for the day,” he said blandly.  “I’m working here again—though obviously you know that.”

Ray’s hands clenched into fists, then unclenched.  “Yeah, I was talking to Andre last night—”

Vecchio snorted.  “Good to know you’re still keeping in touch with some of the old gang—”

“—and he told me about you goin’ back to work for Mr. Li.  He _also _told me who’s been hanging off your right arm for the past week.”

Vecchio jiggled the key in the lock and shoved at the door, but it remained stuck.  “Ah, fuck it,” he muttered.  Casting a glance at the street first, he stepped back and described a circle in the air with his left hand.  This time, he jabbed at the huge oak door with one finger and it opened easily.

“Might as well stick with my strengths, huh?  You comin’ in or you want to do this in the street?”

“Inside is fine,” Ray growled, pushing past his brother into the lushly-scented interior of the shop. 

Before Ray could get himself going, Vecchio said, “Can we just skip the parts where you lecture me about getting involved with mundanes?  Because we’re gonna get into this whole pot-kettle argument, and I don’t want to fall asleep from the boredom when I got an eight-hour day ahead of me.”

“Okay,” Ray gritted, taking a step toward him.  “How about we get to the part where she’s _Stella Dubois_?”

Vecchio had the balls to shrug.  Ray tried not to pop him one right there.

“Try to follow along here, willya?” Ray snapped.  “Besides the fact she’s a well-known _reporter _who loves to stir up shit wherever she goes, she also happens to be the girl who got me expelled for practicing _witchcraft _in middle school.  I don’t know if it’s such a hot idea to give her a gold key to the city, you know what I mean?”

Vecchio frowned.  “I thought you told Ma they couldn’t prove anything.”

For a moment, Ray felt like he was a kid again.  He hated that feeling.  “She couldn’t.  That’s not to say she didn’t try to.”

“Did she see you?”

Ray folded his arms in an attempt to make himself smaller.  “Maybe.”

“Did she see you?”

“Yeah, okay?  Yeah!”  Ray spun away from Vecchio and started to pace.  “I was thirteen, I was full of myself, and I was stupid.  I nearly got caught for the sake of a dumb-ass stunt.  You happy now?”

Vecchio didn’t answer that, only looked at him for a few moments, his expression vaguely sad.  “Look, you don’t know how she really is,” he said softly.  “I don’t think—”

“Yeah, you hit it right there,” Ray snarled.  “You’re _not _thinkin’—or at least not with your brain.”

“We’re getting into that pot-kettle territory again,” Vecchio told him.  Ray dimly noted the temperature of his voice had turned glacial, but he didn’t care.  He closed the distance between them until his nose was inches from Vecchio’s.

“Get this straight, brother.  I am not going to let you fuck up my life and expose us to the shitstorm Stella Dubois can call down on our heads with one phone call.  If you want to get your rocks off, find some other way to do it.”

Vecchio looked at him with something approaching disgust.  “Not all of us are looking for another notch on their bedposts.  This is something you may not get, but I like her.  She’s bitchy and tough and fucked up and I _like _her.”

Ray drew back at that; he knew that was the way it looked, the way he’d allowed it to look because it had never been any different.  But it _was _different this time, so different that he could feel small pieces of himself falling away every time Fraser left him in the middle of the night to go back to his fancy apartment, every time he woke up in the morning and rolled over into the empty place where Fraser had been.  He opened his mouth to explain, then gave up.  _It’d be like the boy who cried wolf, _he thought, the irony of it slapping him upside the head.

Aloud, he said, “I don’t care if you’re just playing tiddlywinks with her.  The point is, it’s got to stop.  And if you don’t stop it—”

“You’ll stop it for me?” Vecchio drawled.

Ray nodded once.  “You got it.”

“Well, go ahead; it’s not like I can go head to head with you.  I never could.  But if you do, you’d better be prepared for Fraser to get an earful about your activities, right down to the one that dragged him into your bed.” 

“You threatening me?” Ray said, his bones turning to ice, freezing him from the inside.

Vecchio pointed at him, then turned the finger on himself.  “Pot.  Kettle.”

“Okay.”  Ray actually relaxed at that; it was fair, after all.  “Okay.”  He could do this.  He could let go.  He’d done it a hundred times before.  It wasn’t that different.  He wouldn’t let it be.

Ray turned to leave.

“There’s something I still don’t get,” Vecchio said. 

Ray stopped but didn’t turn back, and after a moment Vecchio kept talking.

“You wanted him, you got him, hooray for you.  But if that’s all you’re going to use your gift for, what does it matter if we do end up on the six o’clock news?”

Ray didn’t know how long he stood there, his whole body so tense he could feel his bones creak.  Then he walked out, his every step stiff and jerky like a marionette with one string cut.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

 

 

INT. RAY’S BEDROOM, NIGHT

“Come on, come _on_,” Ray chanted, his body undulating and straining atop Fraser’s, hips snapping as he rode Fraser at a ruthless pace.  The light from the hallway limned him like an eerie parody of a halo, and his lips were parted to reveal rows of sharp white teeth.  It was a predator’s mouth, Fraser thought madly, his own pleasure ramping up and up with every thrust, and eventually he’d be devoured—

“Fuck me, come on and _fuck _me—” Ray’s fingers gripped Fraser’s shoulders, his ass swallowing and releasing Fraser’s cock in a desperate rhythm.

Grasping at the remaining shards of his shattered mind, Fraser reached for Ray’s hips, attempting to moderate their speed.  “What’s—the rush—” he gasped. 

Ray shook his head violently.  After Fraser had given up on receiving a response, Ray panted, “Just—need it like this.”  He tried to pick up the pace, then made a growling noise when Fraser’s hands impeded his movement.

“Why?” Fraser willed Ray to look at him, but his gaze was fixed on the wall above his head.  When he got no answer, he added, “What’s wrong?”

Ray’s gaze lowered then, and Fraser’s breath caught at what he saw in it.  No, not what he _saw_; rather, what he _didn’t _see.  Ray’s eyes were like the windows of an abandoned building, empty and dark.

“Fraser,” Ray murmured, leaning down to brush his lips against Fraser’s.  “Sometimes a guy just wants a good…hard…fuck.  It doesn’t have to mean nothing.”  His tongue darted out to tease Fraser’s lips; Fraser forced himself to remain still, to not turn his head away.  “You think you can manage that?”

Fraser stared up at him.  _Please,_ he thought, _don’t do this.  Don’t leave.  Everyone always leaves._

Aloud, he said, “Yes, I believe I can.”  His hands tightened on Ray’s hips and held him fast as he flipped them over, his cock never leaving Ray’s body, his gaze never leaving Ray’s face.  As Fraser hiked up Ray’s legs and draped them over his shoulders, he thought he caught a flicker of life behind those empty windows, a brief memory of the Ray who had stolen his heart with a single look.

He wondered if he would ever get either of them back, then decided it didn’t really matter.

Soon, his own hips were snapping furiously, forcing sharp, broken cries out of Ray with every savage, stabbing movement.  “Is—this—what you want?” he demanded, his voice hollow and harsh.

Ray’s hands scrabbled frantically against the sheets, then rose to curl around the iron bars of the headboard.  “Yeah,” he gritted, biceps flexing as he began to push into Fraser’s thrusts.  “Yeah.”

  


   
   
   
   
 

EXT. LAKEFRONT, NIGHT

“You cold?”

Stella wrapped her arms tighter around herself as she gazed out at the lake.  “A little.”

Hesitating for a moment, Ray pressed his hand to the small of her back.  She jerked at the touch, then turned to look at him with confusion in her eyes.

“Better?”

“How did you—” Her expression darkened, then slowly cleared.  “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Stella’s gaze lingered on him for a moment longer; Ray met it steadily until she turned away.  They walked on in silence for a few minutes along the winding path beside a shallow inlet.  Ray noticed that the edges of the lake here were frozen over, the ice thinning to open water about thirty feet out.

“You like to skate?” Ray asked, nodding his head at the lake.

“I haven’t done it in years,” Stella murmured. 

“Why not?  You fall down a lot?”

“I was the best figure skater on my team!” she protested, coming to a stop. 

Ray looked down at her, grinning.  “What team?”  She mumbled something he couldn’t hear.  “Come again?”

“The Chilly Millies,” Stella said, only slightly more clearly. 

“The—”  Ray burst out laughing, and she assumed a posture of righteous indignation.

“We went to competitions around Illinois when I was in high school.”

“You got any trophies?” Ray said, unable to resist bumping her gently with his shoulder.

She smiled.  “I threw them out years ago.”  Her voice was soft and a little sad and Ray wanted to kiss her.

Instead he said, “Too bad,” and resumed walking.

After a few more minutes she said, “If I put on a pair of skates now, I’d probably fall.”

“Not if you were with me,” Ray told her.  “I wouldn’t let you.”

Stella’s gaze rose to his as they came to a stop again.  Kowalski’s voice was in his head, yelling at him to smarten up. 

“You’re—like him, aren’t you?” she asked.  There was no fear or hatred in her tone, he noted, only curiosity.  At least he hoped that was all he heard.

He shook his head.  “Not like him.  He can do all kinds of stuff I can’t.  I can only manage the small things—opening doors, turning out lights.”  He took a step closer, his eyes never leaving hers.  “I can’t make someone fall in love with me.  Just keep them warm.  Keep them safe.”

She lifted her chin.  “That’s more than most people can do.”

Figuring he wasn’t going to get a better chance in this lifetime, he closed the remaining distance between them, took her face in his hands and kissed her, slowly and thoroughly.  She fisted her hands in his coat and gave it right back to him.

“So,” Ray murmured some time later, his lips against her ear, “you gonna tell on me to the principal?”

Stella drew back to look into his eyes. 

“No,” she said softly.  “I think I’ll keep this one just for me."  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

  
****

  
INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, NIGHT

For some reason—the most probable being that Ray had worn him out—Fraser didn’t leave as soon as they’d finished.  Instead, he dropped instantly into a deep sleep, his arms wrapped possessively around Ray’s body.

Ray, on the other hand, stayed wide awake, his heart racing, his guts churning.  He could still feel Fraser inside him, still feel the ruthless grip of Fraser’s hand around his cock, squeezing hard enough to pull his fucking _soul _out of him.  

_Maybe he did,_ Ray thought.  _Maybe he did._

Slowly, he edged his way out from under Fraser’s arm, then slid off the bed and reached for his robe.  Fraser made a small, unhappy-sounding noise, but didn’t wake.

He walked into the living room, where Ike was curled up on the sofa.  He raised his head when Ray entered.

“Do not start with me,” Ray told him.  Ike’s head dropped onto his paws again, and Ray began rooting in his liquor cabinet.  He didn’t need the good whiskey tonight, just something he could drink fast.

“Getting drunk isn’t the answer, son.”

Ray grabbed the bottle of JD that was buried at the back of the cabinet.  “I told you—”

Wait a minute.  He straightened abruptly and turned around to see an old guy in a black turtleneck standing in his living room.  Or more appropriately, an old guy’s ghost standing in his living room.  He looked vaguely familiar, though Ray already knew all the ghosts in this building and he wasn’t one of them.

“What the hell—”

“We weren’t formally introduced,” the ghost said.  “My son has appalling manners since coming to this godforsaken country.”

That was it.  “You were with Fraser on Christmas Eve.  In the Scrabby End.”

“Good memory, son.  Robert Fraser, CBC.”

“Ray Kowalski, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“You have an unfortunate tendency to foul language,” Fraser the Elder sniffed.  “Stella was…milder.”

Ray reached for a glass and poured a generous shot of bourbon into it.  “And Stella didn’t have a dick.”

The old guy made a face.  “That, too.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to worry.”  Ray downed the shot in one gulp, nearly choking as it blazed a path down his throat.  “I’m gonna be returning him to the land of the straight and narrow pretty soon.”  He waved a hand like a magician waving over a top hat.  “Everything will be as it was before.”

“Will it?”

Ray poured another shot in lieu of an answer. 

Fraser, Sr. crossed his arms.  “What were your intentions when you started this?”

“Disreputable,” Ray shot back.

“Well, that’s unfortunate.  Because I believe he’s in love with you.”

“He’s in love with what I can do for him,” Ray growled.  “In.  Bed.”

“Yes, well, let’s not, ah, get into gory details—”

“He never wants to go anywhere, do anything, _be_ anywhere.  Except.  In. Bed.”

“Have you ever shown him any more of yourself than that?”

Ray blinked at him, then turned away and downed another drink.  “There is no more than that.”

“You mean apart from the fact that you’re a warlock?  There’s at least a few minutes’ conversation right there, I should think.”

Ray shrugged, tipped the bottle again. 

“He’s becoming a public figure.  An _American _public figure.  Were you expecting to marry him and buy a little house in the suburbs?”

Ray snorted.  “Public figures can do that up in Canada, huh?”

“Son, we had a Prime Minister who never married and conducted séances to speak to his dead dog.  And he ruled the country for _twenty-five years_.”

“Hm,” Ray grunted.

“The point is, your problem isn’t with society.  It’s with yourself.  And you will have to resolve that struggle if you ever expect to be happy—or to make anyone else happy.”

Ray bared his teeth.  “Wow, they got fortune cookies in the afterlife, too.  Neat.”

Fraser, Sr. only shook his head sadly.  “Try not to break his heart.  I don’t know if there’s enough glue in the world to fix it this time.”

“Ray?”

Ray spun around to see a bleary-eyed Fraser peering at him from the doorway of his bedroom.  “Are you—talking to someone?”

Ray spun back around, but apart from Ike he was now the only occupant of the living room.  “Nope.  Just talking to myself.  Sorry I was so loud.”

Fraser shook his head.  “That’s all right.  It’s time I—”  He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling.

Ray felt the bourbon begin to burn a hole in his stomach lining.  “Yeah.  Guess you better.”  It was on the tip of his tongue to beg Fraser to stay.  He poured himself another shot instead.

Fraser looked from Ray’s face to the glass and back again, then turned and disappeared into the bedroom.  The light flicked on as Fraser began searching for his clothes.

The bottle in one fist and the glass in the other, Ray sank onto the couch.  Ike padded up to him and lay at his feet without a word.

“Yeah, thanks,” Ray murmured.  “I love you too, buddy.”

   
   
   
   
 

INT. TV STUDIO, DAY

Fraser was astonished when Stella arrived at the studio twenty minutes late.  Of course, twenty minutes late for Stella was still a half hour earlier than everyone else, but it was the first time he’d ever witnessed even that much of a lapse.  More than that, her usually perfectly coiffed hair was loose, her cheeks were flushed, and…she was _smiling_.  Smiling in a way she’d never smiled when they’d been together, not even at the start.

He tried his best to be happy for her, but could only manage a weakening of the powerful surge of envy that was filling up every available space in his brain.

“Ben!” She was approaching him now, looking genuinely pleased to see him.  “How are you?”

He attempted a smile he knew would look inauthentic.  “Fine.  The editing on the mayoral piece is going well—perhaps you’d like to—”

But Stella was shaking her head.  “No, not how is _work_.  How are _you_?”

Fraser blinked, momentarily at a loss as to how to answer that.  For Stella, work and life were inextricably linked.  Or at least they had been.  “I’m—why do you ask?”

To his further astonishment, Stella laughed softly.  “Because I want to know.  Is that so hard to believe?”

Fraser folded his arms.  “Frankly, yes.”

“Ben, I…” Stella bit her lip in an uncharacteristic display of nervousness.  Her voice dropped.  “I know you may find this hard to believe, but…I want you to know I’m glad you did…what you did.”

Ben frowned.  Surely she couldn’t mean—

“It never would have worked, you and me.”

Dear Lord.  She could.

“I didn’t understand it at first,” Stella said, “but we’re too much alike.  I mean, neither of us is terribly good at opening up.”  Her eyes focused on something only she could see.  “Having fun.”

_That’s the understatement of the century, _Fraser thought. 

“We both needed people who would help us see things in a new light,” Stella added.

“And you’ve found that person?”

Stella’s smile returned; it was the smile, Fraser realized, of the young girl he didn’t believe she had ever allowed herself to be.  “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” she murmured conspiratorially.  “It’s Ray Vecchio.  Your Ray’s brother.”  She leaned in closer.  “He’s one too, you know.”

Fraser’s mind reeled as it tried to assimilate the tide of new information.  _He’s one what?_ he wanted to ask.  _Homosexual?_  But thankfully he didn’t need to prompt her, because Stella was only too willing to expound further.

“What I did to Ray Kowalski when we were kids—it was wrong, I see that now.  I’d been rotten to him for months, and he lashed out in the only way he knew how.”  She waved a hand.  “And he made the hair grow back the next day.  When you see him, tell him I’m sorry, will you?”

Fraser nodded dumbly.  That hadn’t helped him at all, really.

“Listen, I—I just want to say you don’t have to worry about my saying anything about you,” she said softly.  “Right now, all I want is for you to be as happy as I am.  You _are _happy?”

Fraser’s mouth opened.  “Yes,” he heard himself say.  “Deliriously so.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said, patting his arm.  And then he very nearly had a heart attack, because Stella Dubois, a journalist so tough she had once made Vice-President Richard Nixon cry, _winked _at him.  “It’s amazing what a little magic can do, isn’t it?”

   
   
   
   
 

INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, NIGHT

Ray hung up the phone feeling as though he’d been hit by a Mack truck.  He was so lost in his own head he didn’t notice the doorbell was ringing.  It took a bark from Ike to clue him in.

“All right, all right already,” he muttered.  Ike whuffed and headed for the living room.

He opened the door to find Fraser standing in his doorway.  No, not standing; ‘fidgeting’ was more like it.  “I just had the most peculiar day,” he said, without preamble.

Ray’s eyebrows rose.  “Yeah, well, I just had the most peculiar phone call.”  He jerked his head, and Fraser followed him inside.  “Your ex just invited us to a dinner party with my sister and my brother.  Says she wants to bury the hatchet.  Question is, whose forehead is she gonna bury it in?”

Fraser pursed his lips.  “I suspected she might do something like that.”

Ray glared at Ike, who was currently occupying most of the sofa.  “I’ll give you two seconds,” he growled.  Ike vacated the furniture with an aggrieved whine, and Ray reached for a cigarette before taking his place.  “What’s up with her?”

“She’s either lost her mind,” Fraser said slowly, “or she’s in love.”

Ray snorted.  “What’s the difference?”  He struck a match against his thumbnail and lit up.

“She’s seeing your brother.”

“Yeah,” Ray said heavily.  “Guess there’s no accounting for taste.”  He waved a hand.  “Don’t worry about it, Fraser.  I predict that little romance isn’t going to last long.  In fact, I can _guarantee _it won’t.”

“What will you do?” Fraser asked casually.  “Cast a spell?”

Ray looked up at him, keeping his face as expressionless as he could manage.  “What are you asking me?”

“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you that I believe you to be some sort of—well, shaman is the word with which I’m familiar, but you probably have another name for it.  Witch, wizard, warlock.  You have powers that can’t be explained by traditional science.”

“How did you figure all this out?” Ray drawled, flinging one arm over the back of the sofa.

“I’m an investigative journalist,” Fraser said.  “And if it isn’t being too bold, I fancy myself a good one.  I’ve spent the afternoon adding up the evidence.  An overheard conversation with a man who's been dead for quite some time.  Things Stella said this morning.  The—when viewed objectively—highly irregular events of the past several weeks, beginning with the first night we…”  He trailed off, looking away.

“Fucked?” Ray supplied helpfully.

“I was going to supply another word, but after the other night, perhaps that’s the best word.  Yes.  Fucked.”

Even delivered as it was in that cold voice, Ray couldn’t help the desire that spread through him at hearing Fraser say the word.  “That’s what guys do with guys, Fraser,” he said quietly.  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“No, that’s true,” Fraser agreed.  “And I’m sorry if I led you to believe I felt that way.  I wasn’t ashamed, though I was afraid, and that’s as bad.  Perhaps it’s worse, in some ways.  But I was hoping—at least at first—that there might be something _more _to it than just—fucking.”

Ray tapped his cigarette against the ashtray on the coffee table.  Dammit, his hand was shaking. 

“Ray, when we met—what was your first thought?”

Ray considered lying.  “I wanted to dance with you,” he admitted.

“You—”

“I thought you were gorgeous,” Ray continued.  “And I wanted you.”

“Was that all?”

_No_, Ray thought.  “What else do you want to hear?”

“Did you want me because Stella and I were together?”

“I didn’t know you were with Stella until you showed up at the club.”

Fraser clenched his fists.  “Don’t lie to me.”

Ray blinked.  “I’m not lying.”

Fraser shook his head.  “I don’t remember much about that night, but I remember sitting with you in the night club and suddenly having this—vivid—image of the two of us.”  God, Fraser was blushing, he was _blushing _even after everything they’d done together.  “And after that I couldn’t think of anything else; it invaded my brain.  I couldn’t think of anything but having you, having you naked under my hands, gasping my name—” He turned away and Ray heard him suck in a ragged breath.  “And later, even after I’d _fucked _you—” Ray flinched “—it wasn’t enough.  It felt like I’d never have enough of you.”  He paused, and this time his voice was barely a whisper.  “It still feels that way.”

“Fraser—” Ray began, without a single idea of what he was going to say next.

“You did that to me, didn’t you?”

“It was an accident.”  Ray squeezed his eyes shut as soon as the words were out of his mouth.  _Shit._

Fraser choked out a bitter laugh.  “An accident?”

Ray sprang to his feet.  “That’s not—oh, hell.  Sometimes I don’t—do things deliberately, but it’s not like it was random.  I wanted you, and it got out of control.  When I figured out what had happened, I tried to reverse it.”

Fraser turned to face him again.  “Tried?”

“It didn’t work,” Ray murmured.  He took a deep breath and looked Fraser in the eye.  “And yeah, I could’ve kept trying.  But by then I didn’t want it to work.”

Fraser stared at him for a few moments, his whole demeanour as uptight as the first time they’d met.  Ray still wanted to waltz him around the room, but it was too damned late for that, for everything. 

“I only have one more question,” Fraser said stiffly.  “Why did you make me fall in love with you?”

Ray felt like something was slowly carving him into tiny, bite-sized pieces; pretty soon he was going to fall to the floor in a heap of neat little cubes like they did in the cartoons.  “I didn’t.  I only made you want me.  Those love potions they think we cook up, they’re just chemistry—manufactured lust.  That’s all you’re feeling.”

Fraser’s face nearly crumpled before the old, familiar mask slammed into place.  “Well,” he said roughly before he walked out the door, “it’s good to know at least something was real.”

Ray sat back down on the couch and stared at his cigarette as it burned away to nothing in the ashtray.  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

  
INT. STELLA’S APARTMENT, DAY

The knock came just as Stella was bending down to put the lasagne in the oven. 

“Ray, would you get that?” she asked, placing the dish on the rack gingerly.

“Get what?”  Stella twisted around to see Ray, one hip propped against the doorframe, eyes glued to her tush.

Normally, she would have been annoyed by such juvenile behaviour.  Now it only made her feel like doing a little ogling of her own.  Ray Vecchio, she reflected, had a very fine tush.

“The door?” she said, her tone filled with aggrieved patience, her smile belying the tone. 

Ray’s lip curled in an answering smile.  “Oh, sure,” he drawled, shoving himself out of his slouch with a jerk of his hips.  “Can do.”  He sauntered out, giving her a full view of his assets as he did so.  Stella closed the oven door and set to buttering her garlic bread.

God, she was turning into some kind of Italian domestic goddess.  Or perhaps not; after all, Ray had been the one to make the lasagne.  But she had bought all the ingredients—as per his instructions.  And she was buttering.  That had to count for something.

“Look who’s early.”

Stella turned at Ray’s voice to see Ben standing uneasily just inside the kitchen door.  He still had his coat on, and his hands were occupied with slowly mangling the brim of his hat. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said.  “But I wanted to let you know I wouldn’t be able to make it.”  He paused.  “Ah.  This evening.”  He blinked at her, then at the oven, then at the garlic bread.  “Oh, dear.  You’ve started cooking, haven’t you?”

Stella studied him more closely, and saw immediately the lines of tension around his mouth and the dark circles under his eyes.  Those would be difficult to hide from the cameras on Monday.  “Ben, what’s wrong?”

“I—that is—” Fraser’s gaze dropped to his hands “—now that I’m here, it’s more difficult than I thought.”  He turned to Ray.  “I know that your familial relationship makes this awkward, Mr. Vecchio, but you’re the only other—that is, that I know, besides Miss Vecchio, and as you can imagine that the same problem obtains in that situation, further compounded by the fact that she is a woman—”

Ray held up both hands.  “Relax, Fraser.  I think I know what you’re looking for.”

“Oh, thank God,” Ben breathed, practically collapsing in relief.

Stella folded her arms. “Well, I don’t.  Would someone mind telling me what’s going on?”

Ray, to Stella’s surprise, threw an arm around Ben’s shoulders and smiled at her.  “What I believe our friend here needs,” he said, “is a good old-fashioned exorcism.  And I know just the person who can give it to him.”

  


   
   
   
   
 

INT. WELSH’S HOUSE, NIGHT

Fraser tried for the tenth time to get up from the chair in which he was sitting.  For the tenth time, strong hands pushed him back down. 

When Ray Vecchio had told him he knew one of the most powerful practitioners of magic in the greater Chicago area—apart from his brother—he had been expecting a wizened old hag, perhaps named Griselda, with a gaze of steel and a bubbling cauldron, living in an old Victorian mansion filled with knickknacks and dusty books.  Well, come to think of it, the gaze of steel and the bubbling cauldron had proved to be accurate, but the wizened old hag was a burly man named Harding Welsh with the look of a retired drill sergeant.

Or possibly an ex-convict.

“Who’s a fool?  You’re a fool!”

“Shaddup, Sybil.”  The parrot sitting on its perch near Fraser’s head was nearly as disreputable in appearance as its owner.  It looked ancient, its sparse, faded green feathers sprouting at odd angles from its body.  At Welsh’s barked command, the bird turned its attention away from Fraser and back to its original pursuit, the Milton Berle show playing on the television in the next room.

“Every Tuesday,” Welsh muttered under his breath as he stirred his noxious concoction, from which a foul vapour was beginning to emerge,  “if I don’t put it on, it’s ‘Uncle Milty!  Uncle Milty!’ over and over and _over _again until I want to slit my wrists.”

Fraser smiled and nodded, unsure of what to say to a man who had issues with his parrot’s television viewing habits.

Welsh tapped the huge wooden spoon on the side of the cauldron and laid it aside before coming to inspect Fraser more closely.  Fraser summoned all of his self-control to avoid flinching when Welsh pulled down the bottom of his left eyelid.  He frowned at whatever he found and let Fraser’s lid snap back into place.  Straightening, he regarded his shelf full of ingredients, then snatched a jar off the shelf and added a pinch of the contents to his mixture.

“That Kowalski has a lot of raw talent,” Welsh said thoughtfully as he returned to his stirring.  “Strictly amateur status, of course, but there’s no shame in that.”  He eyed Fraser.  “Did he use the dog?”

“Pardon me?”

“The dog, the dog.  His familiar?  Eisenhower, I think?”

“I like Ike!  I like Ike!”

“Watch your program,” growled Welsh.  The parrot subsided with a put-upon squawk. 

“No,” Fraser said.  “He—I don’t know what he did.  He didn’t use anything that I could determine.”

“Hm.”  Welsh shook his head.  “All that potential wasted.  He could make governments topple if he put his mind to it.”  He grinned toothily.  “Not that we’re about that any more.”

“Of course not,” Fraser agreed hastily.

Welsh gave the mixture one last stir, then put on a pair of heavy leather gloves.  Lifting the cauldron gently, he tipped part of its contents into a large soup bowl, which he then proffered to Fraser.  Fraser stared at the bowl in his hands stupidly.

“Drink it.” Welsh commanded.

Fraser blanched.  He could barely stand to be this close to the vomit-inducing stench of it.  “I—I don’t think I—”

“Drink it!” Welsh roared.  “Do it now!”

Reluctantly, Fraser raised the bowl to his lips.  His lips quivered and peeled back from his teeth, as though they were attempting to flee. 

“Come on, son.  You’ve drunk far worse than that.  Remember your grandmother’s homemade croup medicine?”

Fraser looked up to see his dead father standing next to Welsh, who was staring at his visitor in fascination.  “Are you here to witness my humiliation?”

His father had the good grace to look uncomfortable.  “Only making sure that this is what you want.”

“It is what I want,” Fraser said firmly.  “I want this to be over, and if ingesting this horrific sludge will do it…”

“Then why can’t you force yourself to drink it?” his father pointed out.

Fraser glared at him for a moment, a potent mixture of rage and regret and unutterable sadness rendering him incapable of speech. Then he took a deep breath and drank the contents of the bowl in six quick gulps.

To his surprise, his father’s expression was not smug but sympathetic.  “Perhaps it’s for the best, then,” he said simply before fading into the ether.

Welsh took the bowl from him, then jerked a thumb at the place where his father had been.  “Friend of yours?”

Fraser nodded.  “When will this take effect?”

Welsh’s brows drew down in an affronted scowl.  “My potions are top-drawer, Mister Fraser.  The effect is instantaneous.”

“I don’t feel any differently.”

Welsh snorted.  “You will.  Tomorrow, when you see him for the last time.  Confrontation is the final step—”

Fraser stood quickly.  “No, I don’t think I can—”

“It’s not an option,” Welsh interrupted.  “It’s the only way to ensure the effect is permanent.”

Fraser’s shoulders slumped in defeat.  “All right.”

“Now,” Welsh said, “Will that be cash or cheque?”

As the strains of Uncle Milty’s closing theme filled the air, Sybil flapped across the room to land on Fraser’s shoulder.

“Who’s a fool?  You’re a fool!” she screamed in his ear.

Fraser sighed.  “Cheque."  


   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

  
INT. RAY’S APARTMENT, DAY

“Did you hear what I said?” Frannie demanded.  “Ray got him—” she waved her arms in the air “—_fixed_.”

“I heard you,” Ray muttered, reaching into the chameleon tank and lifting out Ted, who was currently a festive shade of turquoise.  “I just don’t care.”

“Euuugghh.  I wish you’d stop playing with those things when I’m here.”

Still stroking Ted, Ray grinned at her evilly.  “Does it make you want to go away?”

Frannie folded her arms.  “How can you not care?  You _loved _him.”

Ray sighed, putting Ted back in his tank.  “I already told you, we can’t fall—”

“That’s an old wives’ tale.  And besides, look at Ray and Stella.”

Ray chuckled hollowly.  “I give ‘em six months, tops.”

“Oh, Ray,” Frannie said.  “Why shouldn’t we be entitled to the same happiness they are?”

Ray snorted.  “What’s so happy about it?  You think it’s all flowers and chocolate, living out in some pastel stucco box in the suburbs, driving through gridlock, mowing the lawn every Sunday?”  He shuddered.  “Joining the _Elks_, for chrissakes?”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Frannie protested.  “Anyway, it’s not like you’d be…” She trailed off and stared at Ray.

“What?” he snapped, wishing she’d just _get lost_, but all of his banishment hexes had stopped working on his sister years ago.  He’d thrown them at her so many times it was like she’d developed an immunity or something.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” she asked slowly.  “Ray and Stella—they can pick up and move out to Evanston anytime they want.  But you and Fraser—it’s not that simple, is it?”

He took a deep breath, trying to project a calm he didn’t feel.  “What do you want me to say, Frannie?  You think I want that ride-off-into-the-sunset moment, like some corny movie?”

“Don’t you?”

“No!” Ray snapped.  “I want to live how I want, _fuck _who I want, and not have to answer to anybody.”

“You could change, you know,” she mused.  “He likes women too.”

Ray gaped at her.  “Are you _nuts_?”

“Well, no.  And you wouldn’t have any either, silly.  Come on, it would be easy for you.  I could help you with, you know, girl stuff.  Clothes, hair, makeup, feminine protection.”  She smiled dreamily.  “I’ve always wanted a sister.”

“Frannie.”  Ray closed his eyes in pain.  “I am not changing myself into a girl so Benton Fraser will want to marry me and take me to his bungalow in Evanston.”

He was met by silence.  Satisfied, he opened his eyes—

—to see a stunned-looking Fraser standing next to an equally stunned-looking Frannie.

“Well, they always tried to tell me there was a hell,” Ray said.  “Now I got proof.”

 “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you later, Ray,” Frannie said, stepping forward to give him a kiss on the cheek and a clandestine wink.  “Don’t forget what I said.”

“It’s burned in my brain.  Thanks,” Ray said with a wave as she exited the shop.  He watched her go for a moment, then turned reluctantly to Fraser.

“So, you wanna buy a turtle?”

Fraser stared at him.  “No thank you, Ray.”

“Then how about a sister?  Happens I got one cheap.”

Fraser said nothing, only kept staring, and Ray sighed.  “What can I do for you, Frase?”

Fraser shook his head as though he were clearing out the cobwebs.  “I—Mr. Welsh told me that I needed to see you.  To make the—ah, magic—complete.”

“He would,” Ray muttered.  “That hack always loved to rub my nose in it.  What’d he charge you?”

“Ah,” Fraser stammered.  “Well.”

“Fraser,” Ray said patiently.  “We’ve both seen each other naked.  How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“A thousand—” Ray choked.  “That’s—oh, hell, here—” He strode to his desk and pulled his checkbook out of the drawer “—I’ll write you a check—”

“No!  That’s all right, I don’t—”

“—s’the least I can do for what I did—”

“—Ray, I can’t take your—”

“—fucking up your whole life—”

“Ray, I won’t take your money!” Fraser shouted.

Ray straightened, looked at him steadily.  “Why not?” he asked coldly.  _You took everything else_, he wanted to say.

“Because it wasn’t your fault that I wanted more than you were interested in giving.  We just—weren’t meant to be.”

Ray looked down, watched his hands carefully fold the check.  “You believe in ‘meant to be’, huh?”

Fraser nodded once.  “Yes.  I do.”

“So you and Stella—”

Fraser shook his head.  “Definitely not meant to be.  She’s found what she needed.”  He paused.  “_Who_ she needed.”

“And what do you need, Frase?”

Fraser blinked.  “Don’t we all need the same things?”

Ray had no answer to that, so he said nothing.  After a moment, Fraser smiled thinly and made to leave, then hesitated.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” he said.  “If you know of anyone who’s looking for a sublet in this building, perhaps you could give them my number.”

“You’re moving?” Ray asked, flabbergasted.

“Yes, I—I’ve accepted a position back home.”

Ray frowned.  “Toronto?”

Fraser shook his head.  “Actually, the North West Territories.  That’s where I’m from originally.  The CBC is setting up a radio station in Yellowknife, and they asked me to head the news division.”

“That’s, uh, great.”  Ray rubbed at the back of his neck.  “I’m happy for you, Frase.”

“Thank you,” Fraser said.  He looked at Ray for another endless moment, then turned away.

Fraser was almost to the door when Ray called, “Hey, Frase.”

One hand on the doorknob, Fraser turned back, eyebrows raised.

“They got any stucco up there?” Ray asked.

“Pardon me?”

Ray shook his head.  “Nothing.  Never mind.  Take care of yourself.  Stay away from, uh, polar bears and yellow snow.”

Fraser smiled, a real one this time.  “I will, Ray.”  And then Ray was alone again.

He turned to find Ike watching him from the doorway of the kitchen, his ice-blue eyes regarding him quizzically.

“What?  What?  I fucked up, I know I fucked up, I fucked up beyond anything known to modern science, are you happy?”

Ike whuffed and trotted through the living room to the shop, then squeezed out the half-open door and trotted upstairs.

“Fine!  Be that way!  I’ll make Ted my familiar, what do you think of that?”

There was no answer.  Ray hung his head.

“I suck,” he muttered.

   
   
   
   
 

 

 

 

INT. APARTMENT BUILDING, DAY

  
It took a full week for Fraser to make all the arrangements necessary for the move up north.  Subletting his apartment and hiring movers weren’t difficult tasks, but there were a thousand small things that got in the way of his leaving any sooner. 

At least that’s what he told himself.  In truth, he spent large amounts of time putting those small things off and taking as long as possible to accomplish them once he did start them.  He’d sit at his desk at home, fully intending to write a letter or make a phone call, and when he regained his focus he’d realize an hour had gone by with nothing to show for it. 

Finally, however, there was no more opportunity for delay, and Fraser was standing in an empty apartment with his suitcases neatly lined up by the door.  He took ahold of the first two and descended the stairs to the truck he’d parked out front.

He’d traded in his ’58 Bel Air two-tone convertible for a sturdy half-ton pickup with studded tires.   It wasn’t the most intelligent idea to drive from Chicago to Yellowknife in February, but he had the time, and he told himself that he needed the long, challenging trip to delineate his old life and his new one, to turn a fresh page, to…

Oh, hell. He couldn’t even convince _himself _of that foolishness.

In all his comings and goings over the past few days, he’d studiously avoided looking in the direction of Ray’s shop, but today the temptation was irresistible.  He paused at the foot of the stairs and set the suitcases down gently, then walked over and peered through the glass door.   Ray was inside, his back partly turned, while he talked with another man, young, tall, thin, dark-haired, presumably a client.  Fraser decided not to interrupt them; after all, everything had been said a week ago.  He’d made his peace with Ray, and there was no need to risk reopening old wounds.

He was about to turn away when he saw the stranger lean forward and envelop Ray in a hug.

Fraser jerked back, nearly stumbling over his bags in the process; it was only his above average sense of balance that prevented him from going arse over teakettle and embarrassing himself in front of Ray and his…whatever he was.  Picking up both cases, he strode to the door. 

Once he got outside, a happy bark nearly sent him flying again.  Peering at the cab of his truck, he saw Ray’s husky perched in the passenger seat, tongue lolling crazily.

“What are you—” Fraser began, then cut himself off.  “For heaven’s sake, now _I’m _talking to it.”

Ike barked again, and Fraser could have sworn there was an affronted note in the sound this time.  Shaking his head, he swung his suitcases into the bed of the cab, secured them and stretched the tarpaulin over them, then turned and marched back into the apartment building.  He’d simply have to interrupt Ray, whatever he was doing.  This was truly hitting below the belt, using a dumb animal to gain some advantage over him.  The fact that Fraser had no idea what that advantage might be didn’t trouble him at this juncture.

Reaching the door of the shop, he raised his hand to knock—no sense in traipsing in without warning, God only knew what he’d find—when the door swung open and the dark-haired man nearly walked right into him.

“_Mon Diable!_  Please excuse me, _monsieur_; I did not see you.”

“That’s, ah, _de rien_,” Fraser stammered, glancing at the man’s face.  All right, so he was disgustingly handsome; what of it?  “Is Mister Kowalski—ah—free now?”

The man laughed musically.  “He has never been free, _chère_, but he is worth it.”  He winked on his way out the door, and Fraser felt his cheeks warm. 

“Henri, what the h—”  Fraser’s gaze rose to meet Ray’s, which registered a mixture of confusion, wariness and a few emotions Fraser couldn’t begin to name.  By the time either of them had thought to check on Henri’s lack of response, he was long gone.

Fraser took a deep breath as though preparing for a dive.  “Your dog seems to think it’s coming to Yellowknife with me.”

Ray frowned. 

“He’s sitting in my truck,” Fraser elaborated.

Ray rolled his eyes heavenward.  “Jesus.  I’m sorry, Frase; he’s got no call to be doing that.”  And then, to Fraser’s surprise, Ray spun around and headed back into the shop.

When he had summoned enough brain power to follow him, he found Ray on the phone.  “What are you doing?”

“Calling Frannie,” Ray said.  “He’s hers now.”

“Why?” Fraser heard himself ask. 

Ray’s eyes grew even more distant.  “He ate too many crickets.”

This time it was Fraser’s turn to frown.  “I don’t—”

“Damn!” Ray slammed the phone down.  “She’s not home.  Look, I don’t know how much good it’ll do, but I can try—”

“Is your sister particularly attached to him?”

Ray smiled without mirth.  “He’s chewed through most of her shoes already.”

“Well, then,” Fraser said, wondering what the hell he was doing, “do you think he’d make a good sled dog?”

Ray’s smile warmed.  “There gonna be any lady sled dogs in his future?”

“I believe that could be arranged.”

“Sold American,” Ray said.  Sobering, he added, “Tell the furball I’ll miss him, okay?”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?” Fraser asked gently.  “He’s right outside.”

Ray shook his head.  “Nah.  Better to have a clean break, you know?  No regrets.”

Fraser took another step back, feeling as though he’d been slapped.  “Yes.  You’re right.  I—”

“Fraser, I didn’t mean—”

But Fraser, gut churning unpleasantly, was already turning to go.  He kept his eyes down as he headed for the exit; that was how he noticed the bulging canvas duffel bag propped by the door.

“Is that Henri’s?” he demanded, aware he was being childish and for once not giving a damn.  _Does he know there’s a clean break in his future?_ he added silently.

“It’s mine.”

Fraser was so overwhelmed by emotion that it took him several seconds to process this.  “You’re going—on a vacation?”

“I sold the business and leased the apartment to Henri.”  He jerked his head toward the door.  “He was here for the keys.”

“He—that’s why he was here?”

Ray’s gaze studied him carefully.  “Well, that and a farewell blow job.”  He raised a hand before Fraser could think to react.  “Kidding.  Henri’s wanted the business for a while, and I’ve been getting tired of it.  He wants to branch out into tropical fish, thinks it’s gonna be the next big thing.”

“What are your plans?”

Ray chuckled.  “Don’t have any.  Figured I’d head out to the airport, close my eyes and pick a plane.”  He tipped his head toward the truck visible through the plate glass window.  “You going to O’Hare too?”  
   
“I’m driving,” Fraser said.

“All the way to Northern Canada?  That’s going to be a hell of a trip.”

“Yes,” Fraser agreed ruefully.  “Though I’m trying to look on it as an adventure.”

Ray’s gaze turned unexpectedly wistful.  “Now _that _sounds like a plan.”

Fraser frowned, mind trying to go in a dozen different directions at once.  “Ray, I—”

Ray continued to look at him with that same intensity, though some of his mask had reasserted itself.  Fraser took a deep breath and began again.

“Would you like a drive to the airport?”

Ray stared at him for a moment, then smiled faintly and shook his head.  “Thanks, but no thanks.  See, I figure it’s gonna take about half my life to forget you, so I’d like to get started on that as soon as I can.”

Now it was Fraser’s turn to stare.

“Kidding,” Ray said again, and Fraser relaxed.  “It’ll be ten years, tops.”

Fraser gaped.  “Ray, are you saying—”

Ray’s gaze flicked away from Fraser.  “I’m not saying anything but happy trails, Fraser.  Now, would you just—”

But Fraser’s heart was beating triple-time in his chest now; he took a step forward.  “Ray, please—”

Ray’s gaze returned to him, and this time there was an almost painful fragility in them that shocked Fraser.  “I can fix it, you know,” Ray told him earnestly.  “I can put it back to the way it was and you’d never know the difference.  Stella and you would be back together like nothing ever happened.”

Fraser frowned at the unexpected offer.  “I don’t want that,” he said after a moment.  “Stella is happy with Ray in a way she never was with me.  I won’t take that away from her.”

“Fine.  Then I can just fix _you_.  You can forget all about—” he waved a hand at the apartment “—_this_ little adventure.  What I did to you.”

“You didn’t do anything to me I didn’t want you to do.”  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Fraser realized they were true.  He’d wanted Ray, needed him in a way he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself. 

He still needed Ray.  The thought should have been more of a revelation than it was.

Ray’s expression had turned stubborn and shadowed.  “You won’t take my money, at least let me give you this.  It’s the least I can do, dammit.”

“Why?” Fraser asked.  “It’s not as though I ever gave you anything in return.”

Ray barked a harsh laugh.  “You gave me lots of stuff, Fraser, and all of it’s stuck up inside my brain, and I can’t fucking get it out.”

Fraser took a tentative step toward him.  Surely Ray couldn’t be saying— “Why don’t you perform a spell on yourself, then?”  Another step.  “You could forget everything, too.”

Ray’s chin jerked up like a wild animal scenting danger.  “Maybe I will.”

“And maybe you won’t,” Fraser countered.  He was close enough now to feel Ray’s breath on his face.

“How do you know?”

“Because you’d have done it by now,” Fraser said, suddenly sure of about a hundred things, sure of Ray, sure of himself, sure of both of them.  “You’d have done it by now,” he repeated, reaching up and threading his fingers through Ray’s rebellious hair, and God, it felt wonderful to touch him again.  “You don’t want to forget me any more than I want to forget you.”  And before Ray could fight him, he leaned in and kissed him softly, thoroughly, trying to tell Ray all the things he didn’t quite have words for yet.

When they parted, Fraser saw that Ray’s eyes were squeezed shut, not in pleasure but in pain.  “Fraser, there’s no point—”

Fraser gripped the back of Ray’s neck to quiet him.  “Dammit, this isn’t a request for a farewell blow job.  I’m saying I don’t want to leave without you.”  He leaned in and pressed his lips to Ray’s ear.  “You’re already packed.  Come with me.  Come with me on an adventure.”

Ray’s eyes snapped open at that, his expression suddenly furious.  “You want me to come up north with you and be—what, your roomie?” Ray spat.  “How’re you gonna explain that to the studio?”

Fraser sucked in a breath at the force of Ray’s anger, though he knew he deserved it.  “I can’t turn back the clock the way you can.  I can’t undo what I did, only to the extent I tell you again that I’m sorry, and that I was wrong.  I know I don’t have the right to ask you to give me another chance—”

Ray shook his head.  “And I’m not askin’ for the white picket fence.  Only—it’ll happen again, Frase.  You’re gonna want a normal life one of these days.”

“If being normal means being without you,” Fraser said slowly, “then I don’t believe I want to be normal.”

“You don’t got any idea what you’re saying,” Ray snapped.  “Why the hell would you want to be a freak when you got a choice?”

“You’re not a freak,” Fraser said roughly, taking Ray by the shoulders and only barely restraining himself from shaking him.

Ray shrugged against Fraser’s hands.  “The problem is not whether or not I am a freak, Frase.  The problem is, I was happy being one before I met you.”

Fraser couldn’t help it.  He started to laugh.

As Ray stared at him in consternation, Fraser managed, “So what you’re saying is that you’re a freak who wants to be normal and I’m a normal person who wants to be a freak?”

One corner of Ray’s mouth turned up.  “I take back what I said.  It’s too late for you, ‘cause you _are _a fully-fledged freak.”

“Thank you,” Fraser said, still chuckling.

“But that’s not the problem either,” Ray said solemnly.  “The world is not a great place for freaks, and it never will be.  Witch hunts don’t just belong in the history books.”

Fraser snorted.  “Ray, at the end of the world you’ll find very few people interested in witch hunts.  My great-uncle Tiberius was beloved by his community, despite his morbid fascination with—well, there’s no need to get into that right now.  But suffice it to say that when everyone’s main focus is avoiding freezing to death, no one much cares how—or with whom—you choose to stay warm.”

Ray’s eyes were no longer filled with rage, but the wariness wasn’t much of an improvement.  Fraser pressed on regardless.  “I need someone to keep me warm.  I need you.”

“Why?” Ray asked softly, and the vulnerability behind the word felt like a knife blade cutting into Fraser’s skin. “Why _me_?”

“Because I love you,” Fraser answered simply.  “And I think it’s been real all along.” 

Ray looked at him sharply, his expression mirroring the surprise that Fraser felt.  Slowly, carefully, Fraser reached out and stroked Ray’s jaw line with his thumb.

“Who’s to say what magic is?” Fraser murmured, leaning closer.

“Fraser,” Ray breathed, closing his eyes.  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Madness runs in my family,” Fraser murmured against Ray’s mouth.  “I’m afraid we can’t risk having children.”

“Guess I won’t be changing into Donna Reed, then, huh?” Ray said, his grin tickling Fraser’s lips.

Wrapping his arms around Ray’s lean torso, Fraser reveled in the press of their bodies after the agonizing weeks apart.  “I don’t think that will be necessary.  I find I like all of your—equipment—exactly as it is.”

“When it comes to matters of equipment,” Ray said, running the tip of his tongue playfully over Fraser’s lower lip, “we are two freaks in perfect agreement.”

  


   
   
   
   
 

INT. CABIN, NIGHT  
   
__  
                                                                                                                                            June 27, 1960  
Dear Stella:

I hope this letter finds you well and happy.  I was very glad to receive your letter along with your wedding invitation.  I hope that both Ray and I will be able to attend. 

The new station is coming together well; we had our first broadcast a month ago and it was a great success.  It’s a humbling experience to be back in the land of my birth, learning about the issues facing the people who have lived here all their lives.  Some days I can’t help feeling like an interloper, but I muddle through and resolve to keep learning.  Perhaps some might say the work here isn’t as challenging or as important as the kind of journalism I would have been doing had I stayed in the States, but I’m glad I made the move.  I feel – connected to this place, in a way I never did in Toronto or London or Chicago.

Since I don’t think Ray is much for letters, please pass along to Ray Vecchio and Francesca that he’s also doing very well—sometimes better than I am.  He’s learning Inuktitut quickly, and he’s picking up a great deal about the Inuit ways—that is to say, the spiritual culture, if you understand my meaning.  They have a rich tradition and Ray is putting his unique skills to great use.  Science teachers being in short supply up here, he managed to find a position for September.  The local children are already amazed at the ease with which he finds new and interesting animals for them to see.  I keep telling him that chameleons and turtles are rare to nonexistent in this part of the world, but he tells me that there are so many freaks up here that no one will notice one more.

I was surprised and happy to hear about Francesca’s preg

“Are you done reading my private correspondence?”

Ray looked up to see Fraser standing over him as he lay in bed, glasses on his nose and Fraser’s unfinished letter in his guilty paws.  He hadn’t meant to look at it, but when he’d found it lying on the nightstand, it had been too much of a temptation.

He tried to look remorseful but knew it probably wasn’t convincing, so he switched to bluster.  “Any letters to old fiancées are fair game.  Didn’t you know that?”

Fraser took the letter from his unresisting fingers and laid it back on the nightstand, then plucked his glasses from his face and did the same with those.  He pushed back the covers and sat down beside Ray, then smiled and ran a hand down the middle of Ray’s bare chest.  “No, I must have missed a chapter somewhere.  Though you have an unfair advantage, since you have no fiancées.”

Ray pondered this.  “I’ll write to Henri and tell him how great you are in the sack.  How d’you like that?”

A couple of months ago, Fraser would’ve gotten all stuffy at that; now he only pressed his lips together and stood.  Ray watched him as he unbuttoned his striped pyjama top and let it fall to the floor, then did the same with the pants.  The luscious, perfect curve of his ass had Ray’s mouth watering before they’d even gotten started. 

“It depends,” Fraser said carelessly as he lowered himself on top of Ray, close but not quite touching him.  “What would you tell him?”  He treated Ray to a passionate but quick kiss, and Ray got hard in about two seconds flat.

“Mmm,” Ray purred, putting every ounce of energy into trying to play it cool, “I’d tell him you’re getting really good at sucking cock.”

Fraser actually jerked back at that; Ray bit his tongue to suppress a grin.  _Bingo_.  “I—ah—”

“At first I thought the thing that really sent me was the way you could take me deep; nobody’s ever been able to take me that deep before.  And then there’s the thing you do with my balls…”

Fraser gulped, his eyes as big as saucers.  “Y—yes?”

“…you know, when you run a finger back and forth between them in time with the sucking?  That really kills me.  But I think the part I like the most is when you—”  He cut himself off, frowning.  “—hm.  No, I think my favourite part is—nah, it ain’t that either—”

“Ray—_please_—”  Fraser sounded like he was being strangled.

“I think it’s the part where you take your tongue—” Ray raised his head and used his own tongue to outline Fraser’s lips “—and lick around and around the head of my cock when I’m getting close.  It’s like you’re tasting more of me, tasting what you do to me, like you’re _hungry _for me—”

“I am—I do—I, oh bloody hell,” Fraser groaned, finally lowering himself all the way onto Ray, his hot body pressing Ray’s into the mattress.  Before Ray could really get to enjoying that part, though, Fraser had slid down far enough to take Ray’s cock in his mouth.  Ray decided he didn’t mind so much.

Considering how hot Ray had gotten from talking about it, Fraser’s decision to go straight to the licking thing was a good one, because three or four good swirls of that strong tongue and Ray was coming so hard his toes curled backwards.  He was barely recovered, somewhere on the road between mindless puddle and wet noodle, when Fraser flipped him over and shoved two slick fingers into his ass.

He had just remembered to groan when he heard Fraser do it for him.  “God, Ray, I love you so much.”  Ray felt the fingers slide in a little deeper, then twist and pull out slowly.  He flopped like a landed fish. 

“Love you, too, Frase,” Ray gasped.  His reward was another finger, pushing in beside the first two. 

“How long?” Fraser demanded, withdrawing his fingers before plunging in again.  “How long have you loved me?”

Christ, if Fraser had wanted him to think, he shouldn’t have blown every brain cell in his head out his ears.  Ray opened his mouth and let his first thought come out.  “About three weeks ago, when you first did that licking thing.”

Another twist had Ray humping the mattress; Fraser stilled him with a firm hand on his hip.  “I’m flattered.”

“Okay, okay,” Ray groaned.  “I think it was when you were nice to Ike.”

He felt Fraser pause.  “Really?”

Ray nodded against the pillow.  “Yeah.  And when Ike was nice to you.  He doesn’t act like a dog for just anybody.”

“Well,” Fraser said, voice kind of unsteady.  “That’s good to know.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”  Ray paused.  “Uh, Fraser?”

“Yes, Ray?” Fraser said mildly.  Ray felt Fraser’s heat against his back as he leaned in.  “Oh, I’m sorry; how inconsiderate of me.  Would you like me to fuck you now?”

Ray gritted his teeth until he thought they’d crack.  “If it’s not—too much trouble,” he managed.

“Not at all,” Fraser said, sucking briefly at his earlobe.  “But I think it will be better if you spread your legs.”

Ray obeyed and turned his head so that he could get some air.  Panting, he asked, “You want me on my knees?”

“No thank you,” Fraser answered.  “I think I’d like to ease into your ass inch by inch, then fuck you very…very… slowly.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ray breathed.  He could feel his cock actually begin to harden again.

Another lick to his earlobe, a shift against Ray’s back, and then Fraser was delivering on his promise, his hot, hard cock taking Ray in gradual, delicious increments, advancing into all the empty places inside him and leaving no more room for doubt or fear or anything but Fraser and the way he made Ray feel. 

When he was all the way inside, Ray watched as Fraser’s biceps strained to lift him up, and then he was gliding out again in a perfect, fluid slide.  Ray bit back a sob as his muscles tried to hold Fraser captive, keep him close.

“Shh,” Fraser soothed.  “I’ll be back.”  After what seemed like centuries he was filling Ray once more, then pulling out and driving in again, and each time seemed deeper and farther and slower than before, and Ray was going out of his fucking _mind_, not that he had any left to lose, and his own hips were gyrating mindlessly, grinding his dick into the mattress, the friction of the soft cotton not quite enough to send him over, and then he was begging, voice hoarse and broken, and Fraser was hauling him up and back and he wrapped his hand around Ray’s cock and pounded into him once, twice, and oh hell yeah, now _this_ was magic—

“Hey,” Ray said, some time later, when they were lying spooned together and he could remember how to talk, “you really think I’m doing good up here?”

Ray felt Fraser’s lips at the base of his neck.  “Yes.  I do.”

“Ike thinks he’s gonna do some of his best work up here,” Ray mused.  “Not to mention get laid a lot.”

“May the same be said of us one day,” Fraser said drowsily, and Ray started laughing and didn’t stop for a long, long time.  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Historical Notes: The CBC actually did take over broadcasting in the North in 1958, with the official handover of the Yellowknife station occurring in late 1959. There were no TV broadcasts to the North until 1973 with the launching of the Anik satellite, and no station in Yellowknife until 1978.
> 
> First published June 2005.


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